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There is a real fight ahead: a fight in the national interest / ‘In 5 years, Indians stashed Rs 688,000 crore illegally’ /

Introduction

ome 70 odd small territories in different locations of the world endeavor to attract investment from outside their border offering financial secrecy laws. These are commonly known as “tax havens”, because they also impose little or no tax on income from sources outside. So tax havens are ideal lodges for black money of many countries. Switzerland is a major tax haven with more than a third of global private funds deposited in its banks. The tax havens have grown phenomenally in the last couple of decades. The current severe economic crisis in the West, which has caused the collapse of several giant financial institutions, has forced many western countries to turn their eyes on the secret wealth. Consequently, secret banking and tax havens became the target of Germany and France, and later the UK and USA. These nations have begun a crusade against tax havens and, especially, against Switzerland since the middle of last year. This new development opens up a great opportunity for India, which has been a victim of flight of capital to tax havens and secret banks. But is India doing now what it should be doing to protect its national interest? If not, what should India be doing to avail of the new opportunity that seems to be opening up? This Book aims to bring out the factual position as has been studied elaborately by Sri. S. Gurumurthy, Corporate Consultant and Co-Convenor, Swadeshi Jagaran Manch and Dr. R. Vaidyanathan, Professor, IIM, Bangalore. Besides,

S

Sri. M.R. Venkatesh, Chartered Accountant has dealt with the Participatory Notes, the internal bombshell through which the secret wealth is siphoned back into India. Sri. Arun Shourie, Former Editor, The Indian Express, has fielded various political questions that have arisen in the context. For the sake of contextual clarity and cogency, repetition of facts is allowed to a limited extent. We profusely thank M/S New Horizon Media Private Limited for their unstinted cooperation in bringing out this book as an elegant and economic edition. Let we, Indians, raise our voice against the secret wealth stashed abroad, at least now, lest we may not find a more opportune moment. Chennai 1.5.2009 Swadeshi Jagaran Manch Tamil Nadu

6

Get Back Money Illegally Deposited in Tax Havens
Dr R Vaidyanathan

ndia should joins hands with different world bodies, including G-20, to address the issue of safe tax havens across the globe. If a deal comes through between the G-20 and different tax havens, particularly Switzerland, the efforts to recover Indian monies illegally stashed away abroad can be hugely successful. These illegal funds, if brought back to India, can tremendously boost our foreign exchange reserves and facilitate infrastructure investment. It is pertinent to mention here that the revenue generation efforts of countries like India are subverted by these deposits and that the gap between tax evasion and terror financing is getting narrower. Also, lesser the transparency in bank accounts, greater the threat to civilized society.
Barack Obama is concerned about them; Merkel is furious about them; and Sarkozy wants to regulate them. But the leaders of one of the most affected countries – India – are not saying or doing anything about them. They are the ‘tax havens’ or offshore financial centers where the ill-gotten wealth of tax evaders of many countries is hoarded. These tax havens are now in the news since developed economies like the US, Germany and France etc. want them to return the ill-gotten wealth stashed away by their citizens.
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I

The Tax Havens The US government, as well its Congress, are most concerned about these tax havens due to the severe economic crisis faced by the country and also due to the pressure from sections of economists etc. to “clean up” the global financial system. There are also concerns regarding the financing of terror groups by some of the tainted money from these tax havens. The detailed discussions on tax havens are provided by the Internal Revenue Service of United States Department of Treasury in a paper on “abusive Offshore Tax Avoidance schemes Sarkozy –Talking Points During 2008.1 I quote from this paper:
These are foreign jurisdictions that offer financial secrecy laws in an effort to attract investment from outside their borders. These jurisdictions are commonly referred to as “tax havens” because in addition to the financial secrecy they provide, they impose little or no tax on income from sources outside these jurisdictions. It is difficult to quantify the amount of assets being held offshore or the rate at which the industry is growing. But it is estimated that some USD 5 trillion in assets is held “offshore” in tax havens. One authority estimates that the annual revenue loss to the USA at a minimum of USD 70 billion. Tax haven service providers and their clients know their actions are veiled from tax authorities by banking and commercial secrecy laws and by lack of tax treaties or tax information exchange agreements. They create paper entities to disguise the real parties to the transactions, and many are willing to create false documents to disguise the real nature of transactions.

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At least forty countries aggressively market themselves as tax havens. Some have gone so far as to offer asylum or immunity to criminals who invest sufficient funds. They permit the formation of companies without any proof of identity perhaps even by remote computer connections. Generally though such extremes are Merkel found in emerging nations where the stability and security of the financial, legal, political systems is questionable. The largest concentrations of assets are attracted to the stable secure environments of the established tax havens – those that have existed for a number of years and enjoy the diplomatic protection of former colonial powers.

These tax havens are estimated at more than 70 in numbers, but as the IRS discussion reveals, around 40 of them aggressively market themselves. The popular ones are Switzerland, Luxemburg, Liechtenstein, Channel Islands and Bahamas. Liechtenstein Affair Recently, one of the tax havens –Liechtenstein – was in the news. Liechtenstein is a country as well as a convenient “letter box” for moneyed people all over the world to hide their illgotten wealth. It is a small principality where, if you jog a little longer, you may end up in the neighbouring country! The crown prince, with a difficult-to pronounce name – Alois von und Zu Liechtenstein (note that the Prince’s surname is same as that of the country) – is angry with Germany for launching a massive tax-evasion investigation involving funds hidden away in his country’s vaults. Germany’s intelligence agency seems to have paid an unnamed informer more than USD 6 million for confidential and secret data about clients of LTG group, a bank owned by the prince’s family. The revelations have already led to the resignation of the head of Deutsche Post – the former

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German mail service that is currently the world’s largest logistics company. The Liechtenstein leaders are furious and have focused their ire at data theft rather than on the facts of the case. The German government has announced that it would share information on accounts held in the tax haven with any government that wanted it. The spokesman for the German Finance Ministry, Thorstein Albig, has indicated that they would respond to such requests without charging any fees for the information. Finland, Sweden and Norway have expressed interest in the data obtained by the German intelligence. Though our tax evaders and crooks are omnipresent, in all continents and in all tax havens, the Indian government’s response has been lukewarm on this issue. It should have dispatched immediately senior officials to get the names of tax offenders from Germany. It is common knowledge that illegal money of India amounting to trillions of dollars is parked in various tax heavens like Antigua, Switzerland, Bahamas, Liechtenstein, Isle of Man and St. Kitts etc. Throughout the Nehruvian socialistic period, underinvoicing of exports and over-invoicing of imports was very common and the funds were siphoned off to these tax havens. In a socialistic way, all leaders – be they from business, politics, films, sports or bureaucracy – participated in creating what we may call ‘Secular Ill-gotten Wealth’ that cut across any caste or creed distinctions. Foreign Institutional Investment Flow in India In the domestic capital market, substantial inflow of money comes from these tax havens by shell companies or by entities that do not want to be registered. India knows that these tax havens distort global resource allocation as well as domestic initiatives in enhancing government coffers. They encourage venality and are also possible sources of substantial drug and terror money. For instance, Securities and Exchange Board of
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India took stringent action in 2007 to phase out Participatory Notes (PNs), not registered by FIIs, from the Indian share markets since most of these exotic instruments were issued to/by anonymous entities not regulated by SEBI. The Board pointed out that nearly 50 per cent of the funds flowing in were through entities not registered under it. The PNs had become the most preferred instrument of investment, with the largest investments from abroad in the Indian stock market routed through them. The amount invested through PNs in Indian stock market increased by several times after the UPA government assumed office. The notional value of investment in PNs, which aggregated Rs 31,875 crore in over 10 years up to March 2004, burgeoned to Rs 3,53,484 crore by August 2007, i.e. increased by over 11 times in just 40 months! Investments through PNs constituted 20 per cent of all FII investments in 2004. This increased to over 51.6 per cent in August 2007. This data is available on the SEBI website. Thus, in 2007, more than half the FII investments were through anonymous PNs. The sub-accounts created by the FIIs for these nameless entities are fraught with dangerous consequences and security risk. The sources of these funds are unknown; the investors are nameless; and billions of dollars invested through PNs are address-less. “Know Your Customer” norms, which the law makes it mandatory for opening simple banks accounts by Indians in this country, are not followed while allowing investment of billions of dollars in the Indian stocks market. The PN mechanism through which unnamed investors participate in our markets, invest and disinvest stocks worth billions of dollars and make and repatriate profits – is thus a mystery wrapped in a puzzle, packed in an enigma, crammed inside a conundrum and delivered through a riddle. The clamour for this form of investments is intriguing, if not outright suspicious. Many experts felt that PNs were Weapons of Mass Destruction – WMD – of our stock markets. Actually, SEBI had proposed that FII and their sub-accounts not be allowed to issue or renew
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offshore derivative instruments. It also wanted them to wind up their current positions over the next 18 months, but these restrictions were revoked under pressure from the Central government. It was generally believed that PNs are not to be issued to Indians, namely Indian residents/NRIs/PIOs/OCBs etc, essentially to deny Indian entities investing in our share market by using anonymous PN route under Foreign Institutional Investors scheme. But something else was perhaps happening. Indian entities were perhaps funneling funds from tax havens back to India through the FII route. This is, to some extent, borne out by the revelations made in a Security Appellate Tribunal order in the Goldman Sachs case on anonymous entities. The order clearly says that since there were no bar on FIIs and their subaccounts to issue/subscribe/purchase any PNs to/from Indian residents or NRIs/PIOs/OCBs, it would be “reasonable to presume” that many of them must have dealt with such persons in the course of their business activities. The SAT concurred with the observation of Goldman Sachs that there was no provision till that date either in the Act or in the Regulations to debar FIIs or their sub-accounts from dealing in PNs with Indian residents/ NRIs/PIOs/OCBs. The crucial SAT observation was that when the FIIs and their sub- accounts were not debarred from dealing in PNs with Indian residents/NRIs/PIOs/OCBs and “many of them would have dealt with the latter, they could not be asked to furnish the undertaking. We could have appreciated the requirement of the undertaking being given by FIIs and their sub-accounts only if they had first been debarred from dealing with the aforesaid persons. In other words, the bar must necessarily precede the undertaking demanded from the FIIs and their subaccounts”. After these observations, the FIIs are required to give undertakings regarding percentage of assets under management in such instruments and also a declaration that they have not issued any to Indian residents or NRIs.
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Unfortunately, the government does not reveal the nature and identification of Foreign Institutional Investors investing in the market nor the nature of origin of these entities. The Indian attitude to this serious issue is in contrast to that of the US. The UBS recently paid a penalty of over $800 millions in the US and also disclosed the secret account details of 300 Americans as per the US government wish. But in India, the same UBS paid a paltry penalty of a few lakh rupees to the SEBI for not – yes, not – disclosing the names of secret PN holders whose funds it had invested, and settled the case just a couple of weeks back! Outflow of Funds from India On the other hand, we find more disturbing issues pertaining to outflow of funds from India. Statistics available on Union Finance Ministry website on the country-wise approvals for Direct Investments in JVs and wholly-owned subsidiaries during 19962007 reveal that more than one- third of outflows out of a total of around 31,000 million USD is to many well known tax havens like Channel Island (5,400 million USD), Mauritius (2,600 million USD), Virgin Islands (1,008 million USD), Cyprus (1,361 million USD) and Cayman Islands (104 million USD). Indian businessmen, howsoever capable, cannot think of investing 5,400 million USD or around Rs 21,000 crore in Channel Island. Data are not available for FIIs, nor in terms of who are the corresponding investors. Why are we very frugal/discreet in providing data when it comes to our foreign inflows and outflows? Unfortunately, our parliamentarians rather than being nosey are increasingly being noisy in putting out probing questions on what is happening in our own markets. The issue is of paramount importance due to many reasons. Any expert on Indian stock markets knows that our markets are increasingly being moved by global flows – both inflows and
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outflows of funds. Secondly, such flows may be of ill-gotten wealth of Indians kept abroad in tax havens or domestic funds sent out and brought back to facilitate some activities. This has to be seen in context of concerns expressed by our own National Security Advisor M K Narayanan regarding the possibility of terror funds coming through financial markets. 2 With parliamentary elections around the corner, the issue becomes most important since we all know that huge funds – not always accounted for – are used during the electoral process. Tax Havens and Developed Economies Under pressure from US federal authorities, Swiss bank UBS is closing down hidden offshore accounts of its well-heeled American clients, potentially allowing their secrets to spill out into the open. In a step that would have been unthinkable at one point in the rarefied world of Swiss banking, UBS will shut about 19,000 accounts that prosecutors suspect have gone undeclared to the Internal Revenue Service. UBS will transfer the assets to other banks or other divisions within UBS, or mail cheques directly to account holders, creating paper trails for federal prosecutors who are examining whether UBS clients used such accounts to evade taxes in the US. The clients now face stark choices: they can encash their cheques and, thereby, alert the authorities to any potential wrongdoing, or not encash them and effectively lose their money. Or, they can transfer the money to new banks, a procedure which, in case of foreign banks, requires depositors of more than $10,000 to report the new account to the Treasury Department. UBS – the largest banking institution in Switzerland – has also committed to provide names of top 250 persons who have kept money in offshore accounts out of 19,000 accounts to the US authorities. UBS has also committed to pay a fine of 780 million USD to settle claims that it has defrauded US Internal Revenue Service. Now, the US State Department is compelling the disclosure of 52,000 American accounts kept with UBS. The
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original charges are that the UBS offshore accounts have helped Americans to hide 18 billion USD in 19,000 accounts. As of now, it has been settlement that anyone who wishes to open offshore account has to do it through US regulatory bodies. Traditionally, Swiss authorities argued that if no criminality was committed under the Swiss laws (which do not recognize currency violations and tax evasion as offences), information on offshore accounts could not be divulged. A similar position was taken in the infamous Bofors case also. Now that wall has been breached by this US agreement with Swiss authorities. UBS, the world’s largest private bank, also assured that it would stop offering to American clients offshore private banking services not declared to the IRS. Prosecutors contend that the UBS helped wealthy Americans hide about 18 billion USD, thereby evading taxes of 300 million USD each year. The UBS is struggling to maintain its centuriesold tradition of Swiss banking secrecy amid mounting legal pressure from the Justice Department to turn over client records. It began handing over some records last summer, causing consternation in the Swiss banking circles. Things began to gather pace thereof. Opinion against secrecy in banks and tax havens has grown rapidly in the West. Today, the Western establishment sees Swiss banking model virtually as an evil. Our target is Indian money kept in these tax havens. This is critical to us, rather than the nuances of the nature of tax havens in relation to the West.
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Recent Developments It is important to note the following fastpaced developments that have taken place recently: In the third quarter of 2008, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), of which Switzerland is one of the 17 members, threatened to blacklist Switzerland for protecting tax evaders. In a preparatory meeting held in February 2009 in Berlin for the April summit of G-20 nations, which includes India, the European leaders vowed to launch a crusade against tax havens at the G-20 meet. They also hinted at sanctions to “punish non-cooperative tax havens”. They were reported to have prepared a list of some 30 such tax shelters and secret havens which they want to name at the summit. When Switzerland, stunned at this development, requested that it be given an opportunity to present its case at the G20 summit, in an extraordinary show of toughness, they bluntly rejected that plea. A week later on February 18, UBS was forced by the US tax administration to reveal the names of some 300 presumed tax evaders. The US threatened to sue the UBS. Fearing that the action would lead to the bank’s demise, the Swiss authorities invoked an emergency clause in their banking law and furnished the required data to the US before Swiss Federal Court, which was moved by the account holders. In less than a week, the Obama administration announced a statute to uncover all secretive tax havens, including Switzerland. The sudden eruption of indignation and anger against banking secrecy and illegitimate money it breeds and protects seems to have shaken the Swiss government. While
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the Swiss government used to stress in the past that its banks’ secrecy was “nonnegotiable”, it can no more stick to that stand. It has now acknowledged that it would have to “compromise”. The Foreign and Justice Ministers of Switzerland have hinted that the country would have to give up protection to foreign tax evaders. The Swiss government has also indicated that it would change its present laws that regard tax evasion as a ‘civil offence’ and make it a ‘criminal offence’. We in India know how Swiss laws were misused to manipulate and cover up the Bofors kickback case. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who was severely criticised for not immediately supporting Germany and France on their stance against banking secrecy in the Berlin preparatory meet, soon came out in support of the move against tax havens and banking secrecy while addressing the US Congress later in February. In contrast, twice in the last one year, India has shown marked disinclination to lay its hands on the data pertaining to illicit money kept by Indian nationals in secret Swiss bank accounts and to strive to get back the Indian wealth hoarded in Swiss banks. While things were moving at a fast pace and the very Western nations which had once encouraged the Swiss banks’ secrecy but were now against secret banking, the Indian representative at the G-20 preparatory meeting in Berlin did not utter any word of support for the move. One of the most important agenda for the G-20 summit now is the issue of tax havens and banking secrecy but the Indian Prime Minister is still maintaining a deafening silence. Considering the enormous Indian monies believed to be hoarded in secret accounts in Switzerland, the Indian government is duty bound to support the move to unlock the banking secrecy and take a proactive position.
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India’s Money and India’s Role In all these discussions, one critical aspect ought not to be forgotten but brought to the surface is the wealth hoarded by Indians in foreign banks for the last five to six decades. The recent developments pertaining to such tainted money should alert us to our own wealth stashed away abroad. Addressing a press conference to commemorate 60 years of IndoSwiss Friendship Treaty, the Swiss Ambassador to India said, “Switzerland was accused of giving shelter to black money and there has been a lot of inflow of such wealth from India and other countries of the world. I would not say it would be stopped 100 per cent (under a new law). But through this measure, it would be controlled up to a certain limit.” 3 The Swiss Ambassador was at least forthcoming about the venality of the Indian elite. However, the worst part of the story is loss of money deposited in Swiss banks after the death of some depositors who failed to pass on the account information to their kin. The Swiss banks appropriate such money after some years (seven to ten) after the death of the beneficiary if there are no claimants. Swiss accounts are operated through codes but most require passport and its number as proof. That is the reason why some persons travel to Switzerland with all expired passports. Zurich is the only European town with trams sporting Hindi slogans on their sides. Of course, it is supposedly linked to Bollywood, but the Indian traffic to Zurich has to be seen to believe. It is suggested that at least 60,000 Indians visit Switzerland – not all going there for skiing!!! The estimate of Indian money in tax havens varies from 500 billion USD to 1.4 trillion USD. The estimates of the money stashed abroad can be inferred from a pioneering study sponsored by the Ford Foundation, ‘Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries: 2002-2006 – Global Financial Integrity – By Dev Kar and DevonCartwright Smith. 4
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Financial flows in the context of this report includes the proceeds from both illicit activities such as corruption (bribery and embezzlement of national wealth), criminal activity and proceeds of licit business that become illicit when transferred across borders in contravention of applicable laws and regulatory frameworks (most commonly to evade payment of taxes). It is pertinent to keep in mind the following points: a. In 2006, the most recent year of the Global Financial Integrity study, developing countries lost an estimated $858.6 billion to $1.06 trillion in illicit financial outflows. Even at the lower end of the range of estimates, the volume of illicit financial flows leaking out of developing countries increased at a compound rate of 18.2 per cent over the fiveyear period analysed for the study. On an average, for the five-year period of this study, Asia accounts for approximately 50 per cent of overall illicit financial flows from all developing countries. This study shows that the average money taken away from India annually during 2002-06 is $27.3 billion. It means that during the five-year period, the amount stashed away equals 136.5 billion dollars. It is not that all this money went to the Swiss banks but other tax havens as well. The share of Swiss banks in the dirty money equals one-third of the global aggregate, some $ 45 billion of the 136.5 billion stashed away from India. Another important point is that the study pertains to only five years. More money was stashed away during the Nehruvian socialist regime. So the loot for 55 years would be several times the about-mentioned amount. In fact, in those days, the Indian rupee commanded a better price per dollar. In other words, a fewer rupees could get more dollars. Estimates are that the Indian money stashed abroad may be of the order of $1.4 trillion.
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b.

c.

d.

e.

f.

This 1.4 trillion USD equals Rs 70 lakh crore. Compare it to our national income of around Rs 50 lakh crore.

How did the money get to tax havens in the first place? There are several methods/reasons: under- and overinvoicing of exports and imports and stashing the balance abroad; kickbacks from major defence/civilian contracts; smuggling of gold in the past; transactions done abroad but not reported in India; hawala funds; and funds earned by artistes/entertainment industry/ sportspersons but stashed abroad. If you opt to indulge in adharma, hundred ways open up! We need to take steps to bring back to India all the illegal money stashed away in these tax havens. It has been successfully demonstrated by countries which tried to recover assets stashed abroad by their corrupt leaders and businessmen, that this can be accomplished. Consider these examples: Philippines slogged for 18 years but finally succeeded in getting back the bribe money of its former President Ferdinand Marcos ($ 624 million) held in Swiss Bank accounts. Between 2001-2004, Peru recovered $180 millions stashed away in tax havens by Vladimiro Montesinos. Between 2005-2006, Nigeria recovered 505 million USD of Sani Abacha, otherwise frozen and forfeited by Swiss authorities. If India joins hands with the OECD and G-20 nations and a deal comes through between the G-20 and different tax havens, particularly Switzerland, the process to recover Indian monies can be much shorter and hugely successful. The illegal funds, if brought back to India, can tremendously boost our foreign exchange reserves and facilitate infrastructure investment. The entire tax efforts of countries like India are subverted by these deposits. The gap between tax evasion and terror financing is getting smaller. Lesser the transparency in
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bank accounts, greater the threat to civilised society. From this point also, it is imperative for us to get these vaults opened. The issue should also become a major issue for world trade and financial negotiations. The entire issue of global financial flows and cross-country free flows becomes meaningless due to presence of these tax heavens. An Indian lead will shake the world and help a large number of African and Latino countries in the process. Even spiritual leader like Baba Ramdev has demanded that steps be taken to bring back the stashed money. Another important is whether there is a political will among the India’s ruling class to put the issue of tax havens on global agenda and compel developed countries to facilitate burial of this anachronism in the 21st century? These tiny islands have had their time, crooked purpose and place in history. But not now in a globalizing world where compliance is the motto and transparency the mantra. India will bring sanity to global financial markets and joy to millions of pauperised persons in Latin America, Asia and Africa if it takes up the issue of tax havens. Let us get back our money and clean up the global financial system in the process. To start with, we can add a column in affidavits to be submitted by electoral candidates, regarding wealth accumulated abroad. Of course, politicians are not going to declare their ill-gotten wealth but the column may come in handy in future to formulate charge of submission of false affidavits. Second issue is with regards to link between globalisation and ill-gotten wealth. India as a responsible member of world forums can and should demand transparency from these tax heavens to provide information regarding illicit wealth, its source and time. These funds are as dangerous to the global welfare as global warming or carbon toxins. It is for the G-20 leaders to address the issue to bring orderly growth in the global financial markets. The entire revenue generation efforts of countries like India get subverted by these illegal deposits abroad. Therefore, India should raise
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the issue at G-20/WTO/IMF/UN and also as a member of Egmont Group, which is an international body to stimulate cooperation amongst Financial Intelligence Unit (FIUs) across the globe. More than 100 countries are its members. FIU-India was made a member of the Egmont Group at its recent Plenary Session at Hamilton, Bermuda after verification of the FIUIndia’s operational status and ability to share information with foreign FIUs. The Egmont Group membership, apart from meeting an important requirement of Financial Action Task Force (FATF), will facilitate and enhance the exchange of information by FIUIndia with other FIUs. Admission of FIU-India into the Egmont Group is a major step forward for India to join the international community in its fight against money laundering and financing of terrorism. On its part, the Indian government continues to remain committed to fight the menace of money laundering and financing of terrorism with full might. India has enacted the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA) which was brought into force from July 1, 2005. Financial Intelligence UnitIndia has also been set up to receive information relating to large cash and suspicious transactions under PMLA from various entities in financial sector and disseminate information in appropriate cases to relevant intelligence/law enforcement agencies. FIU-India has, till now, received more than 27 lakh Cash Transaction Reports and more than 1,100 Suspicious Transaction Reports from various entities in the financial sector. FIU-India is also authorised to share information relating to suspect financial transactions with other FIUs. Hence, it is important that India takes the lead and encourage other African and Latin American and Asian countries to join in this effort. In Bofors case, it was the government of the day versus opposition parties. But now, a mass movement has to be built against all tainted leaders. The citizens of India should fight to uphold the values of our Republic, which is not just a market or museum piece but a living civilization wounded by colonialists and looted
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by current thanedars ruling the roost in the corridors of power. If the leaders keep quiet on this burning issue, we can conclude that the elite of the country have failed us. Of course, the mainstream media – both electronic and print – will campaign to “fill up pubs” in the name of freedom rather than take up any serious issue. Our media has become a mere entertainer and is not interested in any important issue. Let us remember that the past history suggests that our elite failed India and helped in the plunder and devastation of this country. The silence of our elite in politics/media/business/ bureaucracy and arts speaks volumes about our collective guilt. ‘No criminals in politics’ is a good campaign, but can we afford leaders who stash funds abroad? Black money stashed abroad is the Gangotri of all crimes. It shows our distrust for our motherland and contempt for dharma. Let us deal with it first. (April 2009, Eternal India, New Delhi) References 1. See http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id= 106568,00.html 2. See his speech ‘Link between world of finance and terrorism’ at Munich Security Conference on February 11, 2007 http://www.fedpol.admin.ch/fedpol/en/home/themen/ kriminalitaet/geldwaescherei.html 3. NDTV Profit, March 15, 2008 4. Source: http://www.gfip.org/storage/gfip/executive%20%20final%20version%201-5-09.pdf

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Cheese, Knife and Crooks
Dr R Vaidyanathan

You need to be careful if you are jogging in Luxembourg as you
may enter the next country. You need to carry your passport in your jogging shorts. Recently, France and Germany were worried about the black money of their citizens getting into secret accounts in Luxembourg, another EU country since the banking secrecy is fully operative in that small stamp-sized kingdom. It is a well-known fact that Channel Islands under UK, Austria, and Belgium are some of the locations with banking secrecy where one can keep his ill-gotten wealth without questions asked. The European Union considered having either a withholding tax or sharing of information to tackle this menace. It was felt that it was better to go for sharing of information than into tax complications. But tiny Luxembourg felt that all that black money would go to nearby Switzerland, not to a member of EU. Switzerland, known for its knife, cheese/chocolates and salted black money is very upset and does not want anything to do with this. If one group can be called Maha Papis in the true sense of the term, it is the Swiss. Political leaders, bureaucrats and army-brass from A for Afghanistan to Z for Zambia [I for India very much included] have kept their ill-gotten wealth in the secret accounts of Swiss banks and that country has grown based only on this ill-gotten wealth. Many of these leaders do not even leave the details of the secret accounts with their own family
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members and die in a coup, assassination or accident. Subsequently, the money quietly goes to the bank holding it. The nature of the Swiss loot can be understood by a recent event pertaining to Italy. The Italian government announced amnesty to those Italians who brought back the ill-gotten wealth from Switzerland, and some USD 49 billion came back in a few months. The Swiss claim that it was only a tenth of what Italians have stored in their banks! The very same country and its leaders have the audacity to lecture to countries like India regarding reforming the economy. They want to invest in the form of FDI in India and they want transparency. Can there be more irony than this? Our own wealth is to be invested back but with so much of demand for transparency from us. This is the nature of ‘globalization’ we are facing today. The first step in globalization is to eradicate these moneylaundering centers where terror money, drug money, crime money, corrupt commission money and black money to avoid taxes are salted away. But no one discusses this or talks about it. It is not on the agenda in Doha or Washington or anywhere else. Indian experts and leaders pretend that this is not an issue. It is a shame on these globalizers for whom only developing countries like ours need to be transparent. Switzerland should be the number one country in the list of Transparency International for being the most corrupt country. No, it does not find mention there. One might even argue that it is the mistake of the dictators and political leaders from other countries who keep their money there. For these globalizers only the weak and the meek need to be straightened out! Hence India should insist that the first item in the next global meet be on these tax havens and methods to close them down. (Jan 10, 2003, Sulekha.com)
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Illegal Indian money in tax havens: The way we debate it
Dr R Vaidyanathan

Eloquent silences & obfuscations mark media coverage of this issue The debate, or the lack of it, in recent days, on the important issue of our illegal money kept in Switzerland and other tax havens, has been rather interesting. Many in the mainstream media have kept quiet, with hardly an editorial or analysis. TV channels, particularly the business ones, are silent. The Confederation of Indian Industry and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, which lobby for the interests of big business, are observing eloquent silence, too. In the last few months, global newspapers, particularly the business publications such as Financial Times, Wall street Journal and The Economist, have been full of articles and analyses about tax havens and the determination of the USA and other Organisation for economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries to tear off the veil of secrecy over these tax havens, particularly Switzerland. I have been following these developments for 15 years now. I have been arguing against tax havens and suggesting that we make plans to get our money back. I have also included this as a module in my finance course for many years. The latest is my
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column in this paper on March 4 on bringing back our illegal money from Swiss banks. I now find that the CPI(M) in its manifesto has included the issue of our illegal funds in foreign tax havens and so have CPI, JD(U) and SP. BJP has also included it in its manifesto and LK Advani has even held a press conference on it. After all this, one would have expected a major informed discussion on this vital issue. However, it has taken peculiar turns in our politically twisted atmosphere. The political reactions first. The Congress spokesperson has castigated Advani for raking up the issue now, instead of when he was in power. Perhaps the spokesperson is not aware of the fact that the global atmosphere regarding tax havens has dramatically changed in the last few months. World attention was drawn to this issue after Germany stole data from LGT bank of Lichtenstein and got a long list of tax evaders including that of the head of German Post. Then followed severe action from the US government against

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UBS, the largest Swiss bank, after which the latter agreed to part with details of tax evaders and to pay a fine. The OECD has published a list of these tax havens and categorised them according to the level of non-cooperation. The Obama administration is working on a legislation to deal a severe blow to these tax havens. But see how absurd our political reactions have been. Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said India could not discuss this item at the G20 meet on April 2 since it would be “out of line.” This was when the major item on the agenda was dealing with tax havens. There have been some articles in newspapers, too. One was by Ashok V Desai, who called the money “Advani’s mythical trillion.” Given his political orientation and bias towards big business, this was not unexpected. But what was shocking is the obfuscation of issues by bringing in the role of NRIs and their money. Discussions on Indian illegal money in Switzerland do not involve NRIs and their deposits. But Desai makes absurd suggestions like 20 million NRIs making $25,000 per annum and a portion of it in Switzerland, etc. If the NRI is in USA or Norway, he will have his bank accounts in those countries — why on earth in Switzerland? Anyhow, we are debating not about the NRIs but about the resident non-Indians (RNIs) who have accumulated wealth in Swiss banks. Desai seems to be oblivious to the under invoicing —over invoicing of exports or imports; commission in large projects or defence deals, etc in spite of being an “astute and expert” observer of the Indian scene for so long. The following news items may illuminate him.In the first, a business news channel showed the Swiss Ambassador to India telling reporters at an event to commemorate 60 years of the Indo-Swiss Friendship Treaty, “Switzerland was accused of
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giving shelter to black money and there has been a lot of inflow of such wealth from India and other countries of the world... I would not say it would be stopped 100% (under a new law). But through this measure, it would be controlled up to a certain limit.” In another, a report in a business newspaper recently stated, “Swiss private bankers are likely to reduce their exposure to wealthy Indian clients as they cut down their discreet banking services in countries like Germany, France and the United States, analysts say. As the worldwide crackdown on tax evasion gathered momentum following the recent G-20 meeting in London, several Swiss banks, including UBS, which is the world’s largest manager of private wealth assets, have issued travel directives to their “client-facing” staff not to visit foreign countries for carrying out what are called offshore wealth-management banking services. UBS, for instance, has asked its wealth management staff not to travel abroad to meet clients.” The report quoted Serge Steiner, a UBS executive, as saying this will also apply to India. “However, UBS India will continue to service wealth management for Indian clients,” Steiner said. In effect, it would be a complete onshore (domestic) activity unlike the UBS wealth management staff descending from Singapore to service rich Indian clients.” Going by the report, Swiss banks currently manage around $2 trillion offshore assets of clients from various countries.
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UBS, which is now mired in a major legal dispute with the US tax authorities, has passed information of over 300 accounts of wealthy American clients to the US Internal Revenue Service. But the IRS is not satisfied with UBS and wants the Swiss bank to provide information on some 52,000 American clients. Besides, two UBS bankers were arrested in the US on the ground that they were involved in tax fraud. Consequently, UBS and other Swiss private banks are preparing ground to reduce their exposure to offshore banking services in a move to avoid further difficulties for the bank. Other Swiss private bankers too have been discreetly cautioned not to undertake visits in the wake of growing pressure from the G-20 leaders, especially Germany and France, who seem determined to pry open the secret tax havens. But a representative of the Swiss bankers association said there was no general directive to private bankers in Switzerland, suggesting that it is up to each individual bank to decide their foreign travel. A surprising reaction was that of Bibek Debroy. In an article on April 3, the erudite and scholarly Debroy talked about pricing the loot and suggests the difficulties involved in the same. He used the Global financial Integrity (GFI) report but unfortunately looked only at the summary version. In their website, a detailed report is available (Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries: 2002-2006, authors Dev Kar and Devon-Cartwright Smith — A project of Ford Foundation). Page 30 of the full report gives a clearer picture for India. (http:/ /www.gfip.org/storage/gfip/executive%20-%20final%20 version%201-5-09.pdf) Financial flows in the context of this report include the proceeds from both illicit activities such as corruption (bribery and embezzlement of national wealth), criminal activity, and the proceeds of licit business that become illicit when transported across borders in contravention of applicable laws and
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regulatory frameworks (most commonly in order to evade payment of taxes). In 2006, the most recent year of the GFI study, developing countries lost an estimated $858.6 billion to $1.06 trillion in illicit financial outflows. According to the report, the average amount stashed away from India annually during 2002-06 was $27.3 billion, which works out to $136.5 billion over the five years (page 30 of the Ford Foundation Report). It is not that all this money went to Swiss banks, but to different tax and secret shelters. The share of Swiss banks in dirty money from India is at least a third due to historical and geographical reasons. Some $45 billion out of the $136.5 billion stashed away from India would have been hoarded in these five years in Swiss banks. Notably, this figure is only for five years. More money was stashed away during the Nehruvian socialist regime. So, the loot for 55 years preceding 2002 would be several times the about money. In fact, in those days, the Indian rupee commanded a better value per dollar. So, fewer rupees could get more dollars. Hence the estimation that the Indian money stashed away may be of the order of $500 billion to $1.5 trillion. Not only that. ‘The International Narcotics Control Strategy Report - Money Laundering and Financial Crimes - March 2009’ by the US department of state suggests that 30-40% of the inflows may be by Hawala market — not accounted. During 2007-2008, according to that report, formal inflows into India were $42.6 billion and so 40% of this, namely $1.8 billion, could be reflected as illegal “flows” not captured by the law. This sum could be paid for in rupees domestically but stored in tax havens abroad. This implies at least $2 billion is salted away only on the hawala route. One can imagine the total including under-invoicing/ overinvoicing of exports and imports and getting the balance stored abroad and kickbacks from major defence/ civilian contracts.
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Then there are funds earned by artists/ entertainment/ sports people, which are not brought in but stashed abroad. It will be of interest to note that OECD estimates the amount in tax havens to be in the range of $1.7 trillion to $11.5 trillion, on a conservative scale. The US suggests it is losing at least $100 billion per year due to tax havens. Switzerland is specifically mentioned among tax havens as it is the largest and the oldest and also the most uncooperative. For instance, a report dated April 10, 2009 by AFP mentions that “The head of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, Angel Gurria, referred in a letter to Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz to the “inaccuracy” of charges of unfair treatment made by Swiss officials. Switzerland has expressed its disapproval of being targeted as a tax haven by refusing to authorise a budget contribution to the OECD. “There are no ‘blacklists’ and the OECD did not include or ‘threaten to include’ Switzerland on any black list,” Gurria wrote, according to a statement made available by the OECD. “We only shared the criteria that have been approved by our committees and the jurisdictions that were adopting or not the OECD standard,” he said. “As you know very well, Switzerland does not yet have a single agreement on the exchange of tax information that conforms to the OECD standard.” That is the reason all eyes are on Switzerland. Another interesting thing which is taking place is the result of the crackdown in Germany. An April 8 report by Reuters says, “A crackdown on tax havens that prompted Switzerland to loosen its banking secrecy is encouraging more and more Germans to come clean about foreign accounts they use to evade taxes. Berlin has waged a very public campaign to stamp out tax evasion since Klaus Zumwinkel, then chief executive of Deutsche Post and one of Germany’s top businessmen, was arrested in a major tax probe last February.
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“Zumwinkel kicked off a bit of an avalanche,” said Andreas Boehm, a lawyer based in central Berlin. “Afterwards, the number of people coming clean with us... rose by about 400-500%. And that level has been maintained.” This is a positive outcome of the LGT affair where India has been reluctant to grab the names of Indians in the list with the Germans. A report in a leading Indian magazine in February regarding the foreign travels of the ministers of the Union cabinet states that a large number of them have visited Switzerland including side personal trips, definitely not for skiing in the Alps. Hence, we can say there are three issues at stake here: The total amount of illegal money stashed abroad; the amount of illegal money kept by Indians in various tax havens; and the amount kept in Switzerland. On the first issue, developed economies are taking appropriate actions. On the second and third issues, we are debating about the need to provide exact pin code address and permanent account numbers of the culprits before we even debate. As for the silence of our business media, both print and electronic, we can surmise that hedge funds etc have invested in many of these companies and it could be through or from these tax havens. That might explain the eloquent silence. But as a Tamil proverb outs it, can a pumpkin be completely hidden in a katori of curd rice? The Swiss vaults will be opened up with or without India’s role. If it happens as a “collateral benefit” to India, it will make us a banana republic worse than that of Sani Abacha’s Nigeria. The choice is ours. Either we play our necessary role in the global forums and are a facilitator to get back our money, or become a laughing stock when the who’s who of India list is published in some American or European news portal. (April 23, 2009, DNA Newspaper Net Edition)
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Illicit money is the dirty outcome of modern capitalism and Nehruvian Socialism
S Gurumurthy

witzerland has been accused of giving shelter to black money and there has been a lot of inflow of such wealth from India and other countries of the world.” This is not L K Advani, on election mode, speaking last Sunday, but the Swiss ambassador to India briefing the media in Delhi last year. The occasion was the 60th anniversary of Indo-Swiss Friendship Treaty. Admitting that Indian black money gets hoarded in his country, he added that the new law in Switzerland would, not stop it, but control it “up to a certain limit”. The Swiss diplomat authentically answers the first of the FAQs, that is, whether a lot of Indian money is really stashed away in Swiss banks. Swiss banks are not the only secret destination. There are 37 such shelters in the world, says US Inland Revenue. The secret owners of the secreted monies operate in secrecy — venal businessmen, corrupt politicians, public servants, drug lords, and criminal gangs like the D-company. The slush monies are the financial RDX for terror, besides weapons of mass destruction of national and global finance. That there is secret money is no more a secret. Only the amounts and persons are secret. But how much of India’s stolen wealth could be stashed in Switzerland? Specific estimates of this later. Before that, here is a sideshow, but a relevant one.
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S

In the late 1980s, at the behest of The Indian Express, while investigating the Reliance scam, I had attempted to trail the Indian monies secreted abroad. In the course of the probe, I had contacted Fairfax, a US investigative firm, to uncover the Indian wealth stashed abroad. Impressed by their skills, I persuaded the Government of India to engage the firm for the task. Fairfax agreed to work for a slice of the black wealth uncovered by them as fee. According to Swiss sources then, the Indian money secreted in Swiss banks was some $300 billion. That was enough to excite Fairfax to go for the kill. But, soon my efforts landed me in jail on March 13, 1987, when the CBI arrested me on charges that later turned out to be bogus, but were enough to stop the probe. The whole nation knew then that the real reason why rulers struck was their fear that the probe had targeted the Bofors payoff and secret money of the ruling family abroad. Rajiv Gandhi, who was the prime minister then, moved honest and bold civil servants like Vinod Pandey and Bhure Lal out of the probe and eventually sacked V P Singh who, as finance minister then, had authorised the efforts. The chain of events that followed led to corruption emerging as the major issue in the 1989 polls in which Rajiv Gandhi, who had wiped out the opposition in 1984 elections, was defeated, and V P Singh became the prime minister. But there is a great lesson in these developments that often goes unnoticed. And that is, the way the bold national interest initiative to unearth the Indian black wealth abroad was aborted clearly confirmed that the ruling family was mortally afraid of any probe into secret money abroad. This fear haunts the family-led Congress party even today. That is why the 1987 episode is relevant now. Now back to the main story. Illicit money is the dirty outcome of modern capitalism. But, after 9/11, the US realised that not just the buccaneers in
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business, but Osama bin Laden could also hide his funds in secret havens and use them to bomb the world. Campaigns against dirty money as high security risk commenced with the pathbreaking research done by Raymond W Baker, a Harvard MBA and a Brookings scholar. He published his research as a book Capitalism’s Achilles Heel: Dirty Money and How to Renew the Free- Market System. The book was published in 2005. This set off intense debate in the US as the exposure linked dirty business and dirty money with terror and national security. Raymond Baker had estimated, using authentic data, tools and reasons, the dirty wealth secreted in banks at $11.5 trillion to which, he found, one more trillion was being added annually. He added that in the process the West was getting an annual bounty of $500 billion from the developing countries, India included. Global Financial Integrity (GFI), a global watchdog headed by Baker to curtail illicit money flows, has recently brought out detailed estimates of the black wealth hoarded in secret havens from different countries. GFI research shows that during the period 2002 to 2006, annually $27.3 billion was stashed away from India, making a total of $137.5 billion for the five-year period. That is, in just five years, Indian wealth amounting to Rs 6.88 lakh crore has been smuggled out of India. This gives a clue as to how much Indian money would have slipped out of India in the last 62 years, particularly during the Nehruvian socialist regime when the income tax (97.5 per cent) and wealth tax (almost equal to the income earned on investments) together constituted double the income earned. It is undisputed that the Nehruvian socialist model forced huge sums out of India. So the amount of Indian black wealth secreted away in the last 60 years — estimated at from $500 billion (Rs 25 lakh crore) to $1400 billion (Rs 70 lakh crore) — does not seem to be wide off the mark. Economists call it flight of capital. This is the people’s money stolen from them.
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See the consequence even if part of it is brought back. A portion of it would make India free from all external debts which is now over $220 billion; India will transform into an economic superpower; some 10 or 15 Indian rupees could buy a US dollar which today 50 Indian rupees cannot; a litre of petrol on our roadside would cost Rs 15 or even less, against today’s 50 plus; the cost of imports in rupee terms would be down to a third or half; India’s entire infrastructure needs can be funded; India will become so energy efficient and costcompetitive that exporters may need no sops at all; India will lend to — not, as it does now, borrow from — the world; Indian housing can be funded at affordable cost; rural poverty can be wiped out... The list is endless. But, then, is it possible to bring back the secreted monies? What are the roadblocks to such efforts? (April 2, 2009, The New Indian Express)

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A deafening silence on funny money
S Gurumurthy

t was unthinkable six months ago. Switzerland, once a pet of Western capitalism, is now its hate object. During World War II, the tiny nation was the common love of both the Allied and Axis powers, at war with each other. But neutral Switzerland, a friend of all since Napoleonic days, is friendless today. Its prime attraction, financial secrecy secured by law, has become its nemesis. Germany first, France next, the US later, with the UK joining last, have, individually and together, declared a war against secret banking and tax havens like Switzerland. It is a crusade by the West against the Swiss, says the media. Tax havens ask for no income tax from non-citizens and their banks ask no questions about their money. Modern capitalism had all along winked at secret banks and tax shelters; even nicknamed secret money ‘funny money’. But now the West chases secret money like it targets al-Qaeda. Why this miraculous shift? The short answer: ‘financial crisis’. The Guardian of UK wrote (March 4), “European leaders grew increasingly agitated at how tax havens have fostered secrecy that has contributed to the collapse of banks the world over”. The newspaper’s Tax Gap Series estimated the unaccounted global wealth held in secret havens, including Switzerland, at $13 trillion. The annual tax evasion on the dirty fund, estimated at $255 billion was, the newspaper said, twice the global budget
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I

for poor nations. Der Spiegel, a German magazine, reported (March 3) that “Cash strapped governments around the world see the opportunity to finally put an end to bank secrecy” to access the money concealed by their nationals. It added “British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, French President Nicholas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are now joining forces” and “they have set their sights on Switzerland”. The crusade against Swiss banks was started by Germany in early 2008 when its intelligence bribed — bribed? Yes — an informant in LGT Bank in Liechtenstein and got a CD containing the names of some 1,500 tax dodgers, and raided half of them, who were its citizens. It also offered, free of cost, the names of citizens of other countries. Many accepted the offer gratefully. Thereafter, in the third quarter of 2008, Germany pressed the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to blacklist Switzerland for protecting tax dodgers. Switzerland is an OECD member and twothirds of the Swiss speak German. Yet Germany couldn’t care less. Soon, France joined Germany. “We want to put a stop to tax havens”, thundered Sarkozy. At the preparatory G20 summit in Berlin early February, European leaders vowed to launch a global crusade against tax havens at the G20 meet in London, said the Irish Financial News. Europe’s anger was explicit in its refusal to allow the Swiss plea to be presented before the G20 in London. The US moved even more menacingly. On February 18, the US Inland Revenue threatened the largest Swiss bank, UBS, with a lawsuit — that would have bankrupted it — unless the bank disclosed the names and accounts of some 300 American tax dodgers. A frightened UBS forthwith surrendered the secret data to the US before the account holders could stall it by a Swiss court order. Later, the Obama administration told the US Senate that it would bring laws to prise open the world’s most secretive tax havens.
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At this point the UK joined the crusade. Switzerland wilted under the pressure. Spiegel wrote that, for generations, the Swiss had held bank secrecy as “not negotiable”, and added that it was “no longer ” so. The magazine quoted Swiss finance minister Merz as saying that they would have “to compromise”. The Swiss justice and foreign ministers, the magazine reported, had hinted that the country might have to stop protecting tax dodgers. Subsequently, a nervous Merz met Gordon Brown on March 14 with a deal to prevent any move in G20 to blacklist his country. The deal was that Swiss banks would adopt the bank transparency rules of OECD countries. Brown claimed that it was “the beginning of the end of banking secrecy”. Yet, the US is pressing ahead with a law to punish banking secrecy. When the crusade of the West against Swiss banks is succeeding, here Dr Manmohan Singh and his government, instead of celebrating, seem to be worried at their success. Three bits of evidence expose the Congress-led government’s not-so-wellhidden worry. First, when Germany’s finance ministry offered the LTG bank secret data to any country that needed it, the government would not ask for it despite reports that it contained some 100 Indian names. When in April last year, L K Advani wrote to Manmohan, requesting to him to ask Germany for the data, the then finance minister responded evasively. Transparency International noted India’s “stoic silence over the issue” and that it “has not approached the German government for the data’’ (Economic Times, May 25 2008]. More, the revenue secretary in Delhi has reportedly advised the Indian ambassador in Berlin not to push Germany for the details as Germany might not like it – clear proof that the government is scuttling, not getting, the details. Second, when, in the G20 preparatory meeting at Berlin, Germany and France were threatening to blacklist Swiss and other secret tax shelters, India’s silence at Berlin was deafening.
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Montek Singh Ahluwalia, the PM’s righthand who, along with Dr Rakesh Mohan, represented India at Berlin, did not utter a word in support of Germany and France. India, a principal victim of banking secrecy, should have been leading the war cry against it. But it did not even morally support those waging the war. Third, when on Sunday last L K Advani told Manmohan Singh that India should join in the G20 effort to break banking secrecy, the PM did not respond. The spokesperson of the Congress Abhishek Singhvi responded that G20 was not the forum for that, being blissfully ignorant of the fact that it was a main agenda of G20 meet. In fact just ahead of the meeting, Sarkozy had threatened to walk out unless the G20 decisively acted against secret banks and tax havens. No need to strain further to understand Manmohan’s compulsions. The fear that drove the ruling family to abort the 1987 probe into Indian monies secreted abroad is still evident. But Advani’s threat to turn the recovery of Indian wealth secreted abroad an election issue has got the PM and his party off guard. The party has blundered, saying G20 is not the forum, when it is precisely that. Now the prime minister cannot remain silent. He has to do something. At least make a show of doing. But can he? QED: Dr Manmohan Singh stands between the devil and the deep sea — between his party and L K Advani. (April 3, 2009, The New Indian Express)

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Unquestioned loot
S Gurumurthy

All that the BJP leader L K Advani had perhaps intended to do
— when he took up the issue of Indian black wealth stashed away in Swiss and other secret shelters — was to put the Congress party on the back foot at the time of the elections. But he would never have imagined that the Congress would go so far back as to hit its own wicket. This is how the play opened. L K Advani told the media: the Swiss ambassador to India has himself admitted that lots of Indian black money gets secretly lodged in Swiss banks; estimates of Indian black money abroad vary from $500 billion to $1400 billion; forced by the economic crisis, the West, that is Germany, France, US and UK, which had winked at the illicit monies in the past, have begun a crusade against Swiss banks and other secret tax shelters to flush out the money; India must join the Western effort to bring back the Indian black wealth from abroad. With elections round the corner, Advani did turn the issue into a political one. He charged that the Congress was not keen to get back the Indian monies lodged abroad. He cited two instances to support the charge. First, despite his writing to the Dr Manmohan Singh in April last year to ask for the names of Indians reportedly mentioned in the secret record of LGT bank — which the German authorities had offered to open free of cost to give to all who asked for it — the government would not press
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for the Indian names from Germany. Second, he said that in the G20 preparatory meet in Berlin where Germany and France had called for blacklisting of Swiss and other tax havens, the Indian representatives at that meeting never opened their mouth on the issue. Advani rounded off asking the prime minister to take up the issue of Indian monies stashed away in secret Swiss banks and in other tax havens at the G20 meet at London slated for April 2, 2009. Yet, at the London meet, Dr Manmohan Singh would not utter a word. Had he just said that India would join the G20 efforts, the Advani googly would have gone for a six. But, the Congress party went on the back-foot and hit its own wicket instead. But, why did the Congress hit its own wicket instead of a six? Read on. “Why this now, at the time of the elections?” asked the Congress spokesman Manish Tiwari, not knowing that Advani had written to the prime minister long before, in April 2008 itself, on the LGT bank issue. Then entered Abhishek Singhvi, the more articulate spokesman of the party. He asked what did Advani do when NDA was in power. Obviously he has not even read Advani’s statement.Advani has only questioned why the Manmohan government is not acting now [in March 2008] in tandem with the West which has begun crusading against secret banking. Only now the West has turned against secret bank funds. So the question why did the BJP, or even the Congress, not act in the past does not arise. More. Singhvi said that “G20 is not the forum for the issue” of Indian black wealth in Swiss banks. Obviously, running between courtrooms and newsrooms, he had no time to follow the media abroad which were full of news about how the main agenda of G20 was about secret banking. He was all at sea. With the first two failing, entered Jairam Ramesh, the campaign manager of the party. Like Sehwag deploying offence for defence, he wrote a harsh letter to L K Advani saying, “to tell bluntly — Mr Advani, you
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are lying”. Advani, he charged, was lying on his maths about the estimate of the Indian black wealth at between $500 billion and $1400 billion. These numbers, he said, were drawn from questionable Internet sources! All his shouts meant only this: “Mr Advani, the loot from India is not as big as you make it out to be”. But, when the Swiss Ambassador himself has admitted that ‘lot’ of Indian black wealth was flowing into Swiss banks, where is the need to quarrel over how big the loot from India is — as big as Advani says or as small as Jairam Ramesh thinks? The question is where does the Congress stand on the issue of bringing the hoarded Indian wealth from abroad. The three who shout at Advani are deafeningly silent on that. The Congress campaign manager cites a well-known economist Bibek Debroy who has questioned Advani’s estimate of Indian black wealth at a minimum of $500 billion. Debroy, usually an agile and meticulous analyst, has erred in this case. He has looked at the wrong version of the right report and reached incorrect conclusions. Both Advani and Debroy have relied on the Global Financial Integrity (GFI) study that has estimated the global black wealth stashed away in tax havens including India’s. There are two versions of the GFI study — one a layman’s version and the other, the economists’ version. Debroy, an economist, seems to have relied on the layman’s version. And L K Advani, not an economist, has relied on the economists’ version. The economists’ version of the GFI study (at pages 29 and 30 supported by charts, specifically chart 18) estimates, in specific numbers the amount of black wealth stashed away from India between 2002-06 at $137.5 billion. If, in five years, the amount could be $137.5 billion (Rs 6.88 lakh crore), the Advani estimate of $500 billion (Rs 25 lakh crore) to $1400 billion (Rs 70 lakh crore) for six decades since 1947 is not wide off the mark. Bibek Debroy who seems to have looked at only the layman’s version of the GFI study, appears to have missed the specific estimate of the annual loot from India at $27.3 billion which only the economists’ version of the GFI report mentions. This is the cause of the dispute on maths.
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But even otherwise all maths of monies held in secrecy can only be estimates. There can be nothing final about it. That lots of Indian black wealth is lodged in secret Swiss banks and elsewhere is undisputed. The dispute is no more about the loot from India. But only about how big that loot is. The Congress masks the undisputed fact of the loot by questioning the maths of it. Obviously the party seems frightened about the Indian black wealth abroad becoming an issue once again after 1987 when the Bofors bribe scam broke out. The Congress spokesmen do not seem to be defending their party. They are actually exposing their leader whose connections with her Italian friend Quattrocchi who got bribes from Bofors out of the defence budget of India are well known. They seem to confirm the cynical ones who ask: “Do we expect those who assisted Quattrocchi to run away with the money caught stolen from India to bring back the Indian black wealth from Swiss banks?” Understand why the Congress chose to hit its own wicket instead of hitting the Advani googly for a six?. (April 13, 2009, The New Indian Express)

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Why It’s Not Just About 5A5151516L & 5A5151516M?
S Gurumurthy

hen L.K. Advani sent across what looked like a googly at the Congress on the issue of Indian black money in Swiss banks on March 29—just three days before the prime minister was to attend the G-20 meeting in London on April 2—he would only have intended to put the party on the backfoot on an issue on which the Congress looked vulnerable. How his calculation has more than paid off and how the BJP has now on hand a powerful issue that may fix the Congress is the story ahead. Advani did offer enough evidence on that day to demonstrate that the UPA government had shown perceivable disinclination to get at the Indian moneys abroad. Yet, he boldly counselled the prime minister, who was attending the G-20 meeting, to press the issue vigorously at the meeting, failing which, he warned, the BJP would make it an election issue. Imagine that the prime minister had rung up Advani that evening, told him that was precisely what he was intending to do at the G-20 meet and thanked Advani for drumming up public support for that! He would have hit the Advani googly out of the electoral arena. But Advani obviously knew that nothing of that sort would happen. The reason: the ruling dynasty. This issue, as everyone in the party knew, touched the First Family and its friends. The family’s alleged involvement with Bofors kickbacks and Ottavio Quattrocchi and the way the UPA dispensation
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W

allowed ‘Q’ to get off the hook and also to snatch back the Bofors kickbacks held in frozen accounts point to more than just suspicion. Result? The Congress went so far back in defence that it crashed on its own stumps. Read on. The usual, unprepared spokesmen pressed to take on Advani messed up the case even more. Manish Tiwari, a party spokesman, asked Advani—not knowing that Advani had taken up the issue with the prime minister last year itself—why raise it now, at the time of the elections? Advani had last year asked the prime minister to write to the German government to avail of its offer to give the names of non-German nationals who had secret accounts in LGT Bank to get the names of some Indians believed to have deposits in the bank. Abhishek Singhvi stepped in next. He said that G-20 was not the forum to raise the issue of secret money in Swiss banks and tax havens, totally unaware that in the preparatory G-20 meet held in Berlin in February, France and Germany had decided to raise the issue in the London meet. Then came Jairam Ramesh. He questioned Advani’s maths, which estimated loot from India into secret bank accounts abroad at between Rs 25 lakh crore and Rs 70 lakh crore. “You are a liar,” he wrote to Advani, without knowing that the Swiss ambassador to India had himself confessed to NDTV Profit last year (on March 15, 2008) that a “lot of Indian black money flowed into Swiss banks”. Also, the party manager did not read the correct version of the study of Global Financial Integrity, the organisation that had estimated the illicit Indian wealth stashed away abroad— in just five years, 2002 to 2006—at some Rs 6.88 lakh crore. The organisation’s study had validated the BJP’s estimate of the loot. Pranab Mukherjee and Kapil Sibal then stepped in and countercharged that the NDA government had messed it all up by replacing the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA) with the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA), which, they alleged,
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had increased the flow of illicit money from India. The BJP shocked them by reading out an article authored by P. Chidambaram in The Indian Express (in 2002), in which he welcomed the replacement of FERA with FEMA. The BJP also cited the media report which said that instead of pressing the Germans for the names of Indians in LGT Bank’s secret accounts list, the UPA government was advising the Indian ambassador in Berlin not to take the initiative and pester the Germans for details! Somewhere in between, the prime minister counselled the people of India to read an article by a former advisor to the government in a Calcutta daily as a counter to the BJP challenge! There was more fun. Despite his family’s enviable record in stifling the Bofors—read the Quattrocchi—case, Rahul Gandhi promised full investigation into Indian monies stashed abroad. When the Congress theatre was looking so disparate, desperate and comical, the other parties—the CPI(M), the AIADMK, the Samajwadi Party and the BSP—seemed more serious about the issue. They vowed in their manifestos, like the BJP did, to bring back Indian monies abroad, leaving the Congress in splendid isolation. But the BJP seemed to have done perfect homework before raising the issue. As must have been planned earlier, Advani appointed a task force consisting of four persons—Ajit Doval, a security expert; R. Vaidyanathan, an academic with specialisation in finance; Mahesh Jethmalani, a lawyer; and me, a chartered accountant with investigative experience—to prepare the roadmap to recover the loot and advise the BJP. Advani released the task force’s report in Mumbai on April 16. The constitution of the task force itself was a strategic move. On the dispute over how big is the loot, the task force silenced the sceptics thus: “...the maths of the loot may be disputed but the fact of the loot cannot be.” Yet, the report was no partisan political document. It captured how the global situation has taken a U-turn after the
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economic crisis; how the West, which was celebrating financial secrecy as a sacred part of individual privacy, has started seeing it as evil; how western nations themselves now feel threatened by secret banking and tax havens; how they are determined to dismantle both; how no government in India, of any party, could have done much in the past; how the time is ideal for India now to join the global effort to track illicit monies; how India has been missing its opportunities and has given the impression that it was not keen on getting at Indian wealth stashed abroad; what India as a nation should do, and so on. The report also unveiled the global as well as the national strategy for India— not for the BJP as such. The principal advice of the task force was that the BJP must work for national consensus on the issue or build powerful opinion in the country. In line with its advice, Advani appealed to all to take up the issue as a national agenda. The BJP leader seems to have succeeded in raising the issue beyond electoral limits. The media, too, seems to view it more as a national issue, though raised by the BJP. The Hindu, not a great friend to the BJP, has in an editorial titled ‘A Major Issue on the Agenda’, commented: “The recommendations of a task force appointed by the BJP’s senior leader L.K. Advani on the steps to be taken to bring back funds illegally stashed away in tax havens by resident Indians are timely.” It also seemed to endorse the task force on the volume of Indian wealth stashed abroad; also on how, despite a benign tax regime, the outflow of illicit monies has risen. Commending as “unexceptionable” some recommendations of the task force, the editorial concluded that “...bringing back the money stashed abroad will be an enormously time-consuming task but it needs to be attempted. Mr Advani has done well to highlight a key challenge that should be addressed by the new government that is to take office.” The financial daily Hindu Business Line, too, has in its editorial commented, “Whatever the outcome of the elections, the BJP
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will be remembered in history books as the first party to discover an issue to galvanise opinion not just across caste and community lines but also globally.Mr L.K. Advani’s call for greater action against money stashed in Swiss banks and other tax havens, theoretically at least, raises the bar of the poll campaign and sets it in tune with the global attempts to collar countries that allow unaccounted money into a common course of action.” The media undoubtedly sees potential in the issue. The BJP, too, is playing the issue in a big way. For example, Narendra Modi, one of the principal architects of the Swiss money strategy, has conducted a novel poll among the electorate in Gujarat on the issue of Indian money in Swiss banks. Some 26 lakh people are reported to have voted in the poll, with 97 per cent supporting the move. Has the Swiss money issue turned into a major issue in this poll, which was seen as an issueless one? And has the BJP fixed the Congress on the foreign money issue, which the family-led party is vulnerable on? The BJP appears to have succeeded in both. (May 4, 2009, Outlook India.com)

irst the context. Ever since adopting the new economic policies in the early nineties, successive Indian finance ministers have been fixated with just one crucial index to benchmark their performance: the performance of the Sensex. Never mind that less than 2 per cent of Indians are actively linked to the stock markets and, perhaps, less than 10 per cent of the GDP directly correlated to it. The obsession with Sensex by policy framers seems on an objective analysis, extremely puerile. But this is how we Indians have influenced successive finance ministers to fashion the economic policy of the nation. Yatha prajha, thatha raja (people get the government they deserve) , isn’t it? Participatory Notes: Who are the ultimate beneficiaries? Now to the text. As a subset of the policy on foreign direct investment, India allowed investments by foreign institutional investors (FIIs) directly into the stock markets, provided these FIIs register with the Securities and Exchange Board of India and be subjected to its rules and regulations.
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F

India is estimated to have attracted approximately $50 billion on this count since liberalisation. Of this, 50 per cent, that is, $25 billion, is estimated to have come to India as Participatory Notes (PNs). Readers may be aware that PNs are derivative instruments issued by FIIs to foreign investors — individuals or corporates — who want exposure to Indian equities but do not want to register with the Sebi. Further, FIIs are not allowed to issue PNs to Indian nationals, Persons of Indian Origin or Overseas Corporate Bodies (a majority of which are controlled by NRIs). In effect, it is a contract between an FII and a foreigner to invest in India. The underlying securities of PNs, needless to emphasis, are Indian securities. Thus it is a contract between a foreign institution and a foreigner to invest into India. However, the underlying securities of PNs are Indian stocks. In contrast to the stringent Know Your Customer (KYC) norms laid out for resident Indians even for opening a bank account (this is correctly done to prevent money laundering while simultaneously ensuring a trail for tax and other authorities), the norms for PNs are relatively lax. But foreigners have to be treated differently in India. Isn’t Athithi Devo Bhava (a guest is like God) our motto — more so if the athithi (guest) is a foreign investor? True to this, it has to be noted that under the existing framework, FIIs are not bound to reveal the names of PN holders. Ergo, KYC norms do not strictly apply to these investors of PNs. That makes transactions relating to PNs incomprehensible. The net result: Indian regulators do not know the names of such investors, the origin and sources of such funds. Crucially, they can do precious little. Obviously, suspicions about terrorists operating from some tax haven and routing their investments into the Indian stock market remain. The irony is that if such investments are routed through
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Mauritius, the Indo-Mauritius DTAA ensures that even shortterm capital gains are tax free — both in India and Mauritius — again a benefit denied to resident Indians. Consequently, not only is the identity of the investor a secret but also the investment is insulated against any forms of taxation. What more could a terrorist want? Further, another criticism against PNs is that these are predominantly round-tripping of Indian capital, moved out and routed back through the hawala route, taking advantage of the tax-breaks provided by the Indo-Mauritius DTAA. Finance ministry overrules RBI’s objections on PNs Given this background, the finance ministry had constituted a high-power committee comprising senior officials and experts from the Ministry as well as from the Sebi and the Reserve Bank of India in 2005 to look into these issues. In this connection ‘The Report of the Expert Group on Encouraging FII Flows and Checking the Vulnerability of Capital Markets to Speculative flows’ was submitted in November 2005, precisely dealing with these issues. The report had listed out concerns arising from the anonymity afforded by the PN route. Crucially the ‘first’ concern of this group was that ‘some of the money coming into the market via PNs could be the unaccounted wealth of some rich Indians camouflaged under the guise of FII investment.’
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Associated with these concerns was that the capital flows might even be tainted and linked with illegal activities, viz., narcoterrorism. Interestingly, despite such apprehensions, the conclusion of the expert group was to allow investments through PN route. However, the RBI, which was a part of this committee, held a contrary view. In a dissenting note to the expert group, it had stated, “The Reserve Bank’s stance has been that the issue of Participatory Notes should not be permitted. In this context we would like to point out that the main concerns regarding issue of PNs are that the nature of the beneficial ownership or the identity of the investor will not be known, unlike in the case of FIIs registered with a financial regulator.” Further RBI apprehended that “trading of these PNs will lead to multi-layering, which will make it difficult to identify the ultimate holder of PNs. Both conceptually and in practice, restriction on suspicious flows enhance the reputation of markets and lead to healthy flows. We, therefore, reiterate that issuance of Participatory Notes should not be permitted.” Subsequently, the Tarapore Committee, set up by RBI in 2006 to recommend steps to usher in Capital Account Convertibility, reiterated its earlier views of banning PNs. In this connection, the report stated, “In the case of Participatory Notes (PNs), the nature of the beneficial ownership or the identity is not known unlike in the case of FIIs. The Committee is, therefore, of the view that FIIs should be prohibited from investing fresh money raised through PNs. Existing PN-holders may be provided an exit route and phased out completely within one year.” Needless to emphasise, the Finance ministry did not find this idea appealing for obvious and not so obvious reasons. After all when did our government respect institutions?
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The net result is that even the Sebi is unable to details of PNs from FIIs. Readers may recall that when the United Progressive Alliance government took office in May 2004, a huge fall in the stock markets greeted it. In view of this crash the Sebi examined the dealings in securities by various entities. It was found by the Sebi that one FII UBS Securities Asia Limited — was one of the important players responsible for the said crash. During the course of investigation, the Sebi called for information from UBS relating to its major PN clients in terms of their addresses, the names of their directors, fund managers, major shareholders and top ‘five’ investors. Strangely, UBS did not furnish the complete information citing client confidentiality to the Sebi. And all of us thought that the Sebi is armed with enormous powers to regulate the market! Two intelligent Malayalees and three opinions? What further added fuel to the fire has been the divergent opinion of two men at the helm of affairs — the National Security Advisor M K Narayanan and Sebi chief M Damodaran. Speaking at the 43rd Munich Conference on Security Policy in February 2007, Narayanan highlighted eleven common methods employed by terrorist outfits to generate funds. Dwelling on the seventh method — the stock markets — he stated: “Isolated instances of terrorist outfits manipulating the stock markets to raise funds for their operations have been reported. Stock exchanges in Mumbai and Chennai (India) have, on occasions, reported that fictitious or notional companies were engaging in stock-market operations. Some of these companies were later traced to terrorist outfits.” The crucial issue to note here is that the NSA’s apprehension were not hypothetical. Rather they seemed to be based on hard facts and experiences. Importantly, the language used clearly indicates a temporal link between past, present and future.
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In direct contrast, responding to the queries of an anxious press the Sebi chief is reported to have summarily dismissed the views of NSA. Stating that the NSA’s remarks were used by the media out of context he opined: “We do not have any evidence that money raised from the Indian capital market has been used for terrorist activities,” and went on to compound the confusion by adding, “His comments were not country-specific.” While one is indeed tempted to feed on this confusion between the government and the Sebi, responsible journalism dissuades me from doing so as it involves the crucial issue of national security. Or is it merely a case of two intelligent Malayalees (both the dramatis personae are from Kerala) and three opinions? Readers may decide themselves. To conclude, terrorists seem to have foothold in our stock markets. Crucially, no modern State would have ever dealt with its own security in such a lackadaisical manner, as successive Indian governments seem to have done. Though not meeting the exacting standards of a banana republic, it is very apparent that we are very close becoming one. That the BSE Sensex is above 13,000 points is no consolation for victims of terrorism or their family. The argument — made repeatedly by government, media, analysts and beneficiaries of the stock market boom — that if PNs are withdrawn the markets will collapse is specious and perverted. After all, the alternative is much worse: we have in best of circumstances got a deck seat in the Titanic. Haven’t we? (April 16, 2007, Rediff.com)

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Chidambaram stumped out at Jaya’s Googly
M R Venkatesh

The recent decision of the Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT)
in the Goldman Sachs Investments (Mauritius) Limited case has added a new dimension on the convoluted issue of Participatory Notes (PNs), with two political heavyweights — Jayalalithaa and Finance Minister P Chidambaram — slugging out in the open on the issue. Till date, it was commonly believed that FIIs cannot issue PNs to Indian nationals, Persons of Indian Origin (PIOs) or Overseas Corporate Bodies (OCBs). But this perception can be largely attributed to various literatures emanating out of the finance ministry itself, not the least being the ‘The Report of the Expert Group on Encouraging FII Flows and Checking the Vulnerability of Capital Markets to Speculative flows.’ But this judgment of the SAT order in the aforementioned case simply nails the issue comprehensively and turns on its head the common perception about PNs and the manner in which these PNs are being regulated by the Sebi. Strangely, it could not have come at a worse time for the finance minister. It was just a few days back that former Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayalalithaa had raised the issue of PNs and how the anonymity associated with them could lead to a terrorist group exploiting the same.
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Simultaneously, she wondered whether PNs are the cause of the gyrations in the stock markets. In effect, Jaya was questioning the extant regulations in force vis-a-vis the PNs. Dismissing her apprehensions, the finance ministry — in a detailed reply — pointed out that FIIs were required to report at the end of every month, in a prescribed format, all information relating to PNs issued by them, including the information about the subscribers to the said PNs. The FIIs, the ministry’s reply said, were required to provide an undertaking that they, i.e. the FII and/or its associate, have not been issued, subscribed or purchased any PNs to/from Indian residents, Non-Resident Indians, or Persons of Indian Origin, or Overseas Corporate Bodies during the reporting period. Implicit in the reply of the ministry was that FIIs are comprehensively regulated by the Sebi. Surprisingly, as the finance ministry was drafting its reply to Jaya’s allegations, the SAT had come out with its order on Goldman Sachs completely blowing holes in the claims of the ministry, especially on the assertion that the Sebi has full particulars of the holders of PNs. And what must be worrying the mandarins in the North Block is that the reply of the finance ministry completely contradicts the decision of the SAT in the Goldman Sachs case. Surely we are in for interesting political times. First the facts of the case: Through a circular in August 2003, the Sebi prescribed a reporting format for FIIs on this issue. This included an undertaking that the said FII or its associates have not issued any PNs directly or indirectly to Indian residents/NRIs/PIOs/ OCBs till August 2003. Goldman Sachs Investments (Mauritius) Limited — the appellant in the instant case — is a registered sub-account, and Goldman Sachs & Co is the registered FII. On November 25, 2002, the
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appellant as a sub-account issued PNs to one of its affiliate. The affiliate in turn issued PNs on the same underlying security on a back to back basis to Magnus Capital Corporation Limited (Magnus, for short) which is an OCB — an entity to which according the format of the report precluded an FII or its affiliate from issuing PNs to such entities. Obviously, this placed Goldman Sachs in a quandary as these PNs had been issued way back in 2002. Nevertheless, on the issuance of the August 2003 circular, the appellant was obliged to submit to the Sebi a one-time report indicating the outstanding PNs as at August 15, 2003, in the prescribed form along with an undertaking. This report was filed by Goldman Sachs without the undertaking in the prescribed format for the period till August 15, 2003. Nevertheless, it stated, “as far as it was aware” it had not issued into any PNs to Indian Residents, NRIs or OCB’s during the fortnight ending August 31, 2003. In the light of these purported violations in filing these reports in the prescribed reporting format by Goldman Sachs, the Sebi was of the opinion that the former had violated the circular and, therefore, initiated adjudication proceedings. The Sebi order The adjudicating officer of the Sebi observed, “I can understand that the noticee was consciously aware of the importance of the declaration and that is why firstly it avoided filing declaration. So according to me, this is an occasion when the noticee first violated the Sebi circular by not providing the declaration and later when after all of its so called discussions/clarifications from the Sebi the noticee claims to have complied with the Sebi circular by filing a declaration entirely different from the prescribed format.” Further, the order ‘strongly objected’ to the move of Goldman Sachs to change the format of the undertaking as prescribed by
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the Sebi circular. Finally, the order concluded, “If this is the way a registered entity complies with the Sebi circular, I would say it is no compliance.” Accordingly, the Sebi fined Goldman Sachs. In the process it exposes the hollowness of the full compliance theory of the finance ministry. But more is to follow. The findings of SAT. . . This order was appealed in the SAT by Goldman Sachs, who argued that till such time the circular was issued there was no bar on FIIs and their sub-accounts to deal in PNs with Indian residents/NRIs/PIOs/OCBs. In fact, it conceded that many of them ‘had been dealing’ with them in the past and, therefore, the board could not by this circular in question require such FIIs/subaccounts to furnish an undertaking that they had not dealt with such persons. The SAT observed that it found ‘considerable force in this contention.’ The SAT further observed that since there was no bar on the FIIs and their sub-accounts to issue/subscribe/ purchase any PNs to/from Indian residents or NRIs/PIOs/OCBs, it would be “reasonable to presume” that many of them must have dealt with such persons in the course of their business activities. The SAT concurred with the observation of Goldman Sachs that even as on day there is no provision either in the Act or in the Regulations which debars FIIs or their sub-accounts from dealing in PNs with Indian residents/NRIs/PIOs/OCBs. The SAT wondered how FIIs could be asked to furnish such an undertaking in the ‘absence of any bar’ to deal with such persons. This requirement of an undertaking, according to SAT appeared to be opposed to all norms of reason and totally devoid of logic. In fact, it concluded that it bordered on absurdity and is arbitrary. The crucial observation of the SAT is that when the FIIs and their sub accounts have not been debarred from dealing in PNs
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with Indian residents/NRIs/PIOs/OCBs and added ‘many of them would have dealt with the latter, they could not be asked to furnish the undertaking. We could have appreciated the requirement of the undertaking being given by FIIs and their sub-accounts only if they had first been debarred from dealing with the aforesaid persons. In other words, the bar must necessarily precede the undertaking demanded from the FIIs and their sub-accounts.’ And doesn’t the SAT order make the ministry’s assertion look like playing football without goalposts? Does it mean that resident Indians could have invested through the PN route from Mauritius absolutely legally and availed of tax exemption? And doesn’t it make all of us who had paid capital gain taxes on shares look like fools? ... and its political implications The SAT findings on the Goldman Sachs case are serious. In a way it substantially demolishes the assertion of the finance ministry made in its reply to Jaya. Simultaneously, the myth that PNs are regulated through a well thought-out regime too has been blown to smithereens. Where is the question of regulation, declaration and undertaking when there is no bar prohibiting FIIs in dealing in PNs with Indian residents, NRIs, PIOs or OCBs? The Sebi has, in effect, sought to shift the onus of tracking the beneficiaries of PNs to the issuers — viz., the FIIs. This is akin to the police shifting their responsibility to bicycle vendors and holding them responsible for monitoring terrorists. And when the Sebi shifted the onus to the FIIs by seeking an undertaking in the prescribed format, naturally FIIs had to resort to subterfuge by changing the very format of reporting on which the finance ministry places its reliance. And according to SAT, FIIs — in the absence of a bar — need not comply with the format prescribed by the Sebi in the first place!
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It is quite probable that those who are reporting as per the format could well be bluffing! After all who checks? Yet the finance ministry claims that everything is in order! If that is the ground reality, the finance ministry has a lot to explain in the ongoing spat between it and Jayalalithaa. And for the moment it is advantage Jaya. (June 10, 2008, Rediff.com)

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Public loot since 1947: Let us bring back our money
M R Venkatesh

It is one of the biggest loots witnessed by mankind — the loot of
the aam aadmi (common man) since 1947 by his brethren occupying public office. It has been orchestrated by politicians, bureaucrats and some businessmen. The list is almost all-encompassing. No wonder, everyone in India loots with impunity and without any fear. What is even more depressing in that this ill-gotten wealth of ours has been stashed away abroad into secret bank accounts located in some of the world’s best known tax havens. And to that extent the Indian economy has been striped of its wealth. Ordinary Indians may not be exactly aware of how such secret accounts operate and what are the rules and regulations that go on to govern such tax havens. However, one may well be aware of ‘Swiss bank accounts,’ the shorthand for murky dealings, secrecy and of course pilferage from developing countries into rich developed ones. In fact, some finance experts and economists believe tax havens to be a conspiracy of the western world against the poor countries. By allowing the proliferation of tax havens in the twentieth century, the western world explicitly encourages the movement of scarce capital from the developing countries to the rich.
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In March 2005, the Tax Justice Network (TJN) published a research finding demonstrating that $11.5 trillion of personal wealth was held offshore by rich individuals across the globe. The findings estimated that a large proportion of this wealth was managed from some 70 tax havens. Further, augmenting these studies of TJN, Raymond Baker — in his widely celebrated book titled Capitalism’s Achilles Heel: Dirty Money and How to Renew the Free Market System — estimates that at least $5 trillion have been shifted out of poorer countries to the West since the mid-1970s. It is further estimated by experts that one per cent of the world’s population holds more than 57 per cent of total global wealth, routing it invariably through these tax havens. How much of this is from India is anybody’s guess. What is to be noted here is that most of the wealth of Indians parked in these tax havens is illegitimate money acquired through corrupt means. Naturally the secrecy associated with the bank accounts in such places is central to the issue, not their low tax rates as the term ‘tax havens’ suggests. Remember Bofors and how India could not trace the ultimate beneficiary of those transactions because of the secrecy associated with these bank accounts? But this piece is not about Western conspiracy. Rather it is all about recovering out own wealth from these countries. And in this initiative, for obvious reasons, one can expect absolute stonewalling by our own government as well as foreign ones. Naturally this has to be a public initiative — an initiative by you and me, jointly ensuring that our government acts decisively. And in this process there can be no place for any debate — either you are with this initiative or against it. Lingua franca in Zurich is, believe it or not, Hindi! Professor R Vaidyanathan of the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, is one of the most respected and well-known
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authorities on this subject. Writing his columns on this subject in a Chennai-based daily recently he pointed out that “Zurich is the only European town where Hindi slogans are written on the side of the tram-cars. Of course, it is supposedly linked to Bollywood, but the other India traffic to Zurich is to be seen to be believed.” Isn’t this is straight from Ripley’s Believe it or Not? The reasons, according to him, for such heavy Indian traffic to Zurich are obvious. The secrecy laws of these banks mandate personal presence in these tax havens with their passports to operate accounts: passport numbers are crucial to determine the secret code for opening and operating these bank accounts. No wonder many people keep their old expired passports as prized possessions. Apparently this is not to show their grandchildren where they travelled in their younger days. In one of my recent columns — Fraud Survey: Will India Inc respond — I pointed out as to how a bank employee in Lichtenstein, a tax haven, provided details of some account holders to German revenue authorities. Subsequent press reports on the issue point out to the fact that this list contains details of people of other nationalities as well. More importantly, German authorities have expressed willingness to share this information with other nations too. It is thus no surprise that quite a few European countries — viz., Finland, Sweden, Norway — have already expressed interest in the data obtained by the German intelligence agency while Indian authorities have remained silent. No prizes for guessing why. What is galling to note is that it is suspected by the Reserve Bank of India [Get Quote] that this ill-gotten wealth of the rich and mighty Indians finds it way back to the Indian stock markets through the obnoxious Participatory Notes (PNs) route. And if appropriately routed through Mauritius, tax experts opine that any profits arising from such investments are exempt from taxes, both in India and Mauritius. What an arrangement!
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Will our politicians do an Obama? Nigeria, (General Sani Abacha), Peru (Alberto Fujimori) and the Philippines (Ferdinand Marcos) are three well known cases wherein these countries have been successful in getting back the money stashed into such tax havens by their leaders. And such efforts are being increasingly duplicated by different regimes in various parts of the world to recover such national wealth stashed abroad. The point to be noted is that the secrecy of such banks is no longer impregnable. Global experiences show that the determined will of a sovereign nation is sufficient to break it. Strangely, and in direct contrast to these global developments, there is no such movement in India. In fact, post-1989 elections, corruption has ceased to be a central issue at the national elections. The answer to that is apparent. The instances quoted above are of countries that were once ruled by dictators. And action for getting back the national wealth was initiated after such dictators were deposed and replaced by regimes that were bitterly opposed to such dictators. In contrast, in India every political party knows that it cannot accuse the other of being corrupt for the fear of being becoming the target itself. Hence, there is an unwritten truce between political parties not to charge the other of being corrupt. In fact, elections in India offer a choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee to the electorate. As the Hindi saying goes: Hamam mein sab nangey hain (everyone is naked in the bath). No wonder, in India, while democracy facilitates frequent changes of government, the Indian brand of democracy has not been potent enough to tackle the issue of corruption. And this substantially — if not wholly explains — as to why Indians, especially youngsters, are so cynical about political
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leaders, democratic institutions and even democracy. And this when Barack Obama, the Democratic Party candidate for the US President elections, has along with few other colleagues in the US Senate introduced a bill in early 2007 titled ‘Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act.’ This Act broadly seeks to: Establish presumptions to combat offshore secrecy to presume that non-publicly traded, offshore corporations and trusts are controlled by US taxpayers, unless the taxpayer proves otherwise; Provide special and sweeping powers to the Treasury authorities to deal with tax havens; Strengthen detection of offshore activities by requiring US financial institutions that open accounts to report such actions to the concerned authorities; Strengthen penalties to deter such activities. No wonder Obama, despite all the apparent disadvantages, has endeared himself to the electorate in the US. Crucially, would any Indian politician come up with a similar Bill (with appropriate Indian variations) in our Parliament? This is indeed an open challenge to the UPA, NDA and the ever-ready to be born ‘Third Front.’ Corruption as an election agenda Simultaneously, we the people of this country must ensure that corruption becomes the central issue in the following general elections. It is unfortunate that at a subconscious level, we seem to have given up our fight against corruption. Perhaps its gargantuan size seems to have overwhelmed us psychologically. Apart from the need for the legislation as mentioned above we also need to ensure: The Election Commission should alter the format of election affidavits candidates to include declaration for the wealth accumulated abroad.
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We need to ban PNs and ensure that only those who reveal their identity get back their money through the PNs. Else these must be expropriated by the government. Ensure that we cooperate with all multilateral agencies on this subject to ensure that wherever there is a global movement against opaque banking and tax havens we must be active participants. But that is not all. Huge sums of public money have been stashed abroad by Indians in various tax havens. Our democracy and democratic traditions with all their pitfalls as explained above are incompetent to deal with the extant issue. And if we have to recover our money, it can be done through a direct action of the aam aadmi — you and me. Are you ready? (April 15, 2008, Redff.com)

The word ‘reserve’ in the English language implies a sense of
comfort. To an accountant like me it would technically mean an appropriation of profits - necessitating the existence of profits in the first place. To a common man it would imply savings or excess that is held back to be used on a rainy day. Strangely, these definitions and understandings get turned on their head when it involves foreign exchange reserves (forex). For instance, if a country has $100 billion of forex with it, it is assumed that these are ‘reserves’, never mind even if that particular country has begged, borrowed or even stolen it! Naturally, we are in nebulous ground, debating the surreal and attempting to defend the indefensible. Readers may be aware that forex flows into a country could arise through two broad sources - one, when the net exports of that particular country exceed its imports and two, when it receives debt or equity. While the former is called current account surplus, the later is called capital account surplus. Put briefly, the aggregate of the surplus on both the capital and current accounts constitute the forex reserves of a country. What is crucial to understand here is that the inflows in the capital account could reverse anytime on account of any adverse domestic or global events.
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To amplify further, forex flows, especially when built on capital flows are merely cash flows. Yet it gives us all a false sense of comfort, thanks to the misuse of the term ‘reserve’. That makes the build-up of forex reserves by a country on account of the Capital Account that much suspect. It may be noted that the issue with capital flows has always engaged the attention of economists as sudden reversal of flows could dynamite an economy, especially when they are for short term purposes and in effect hot money. With this brief understanding let us turn to India. Readers may be further aware that in 1991 India had virtually zero forex reserves. In contrast to those trying times today India sits on a seemingly healthy Forex Reserves of approximately $300 billions. This is where things get a bit interesting as well as worrying. According to the report on the foreign exchange reserves issued by the RBI for the period till March 2008, India ‘s forex build up is predominantly on the capital account front and not on the current account front. The following table extracted from this RBI report clearly demonstrates that India ‘s build-up of forex reserves is largely on account of capital account. In the process the surplus in the capital account has compensated for the deficits in the current account. Particulars Reserves as at 31st March 1991 Aggregate Current Deficit till March 2008 Capital Account Valuation gains Total
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In USD Billions 6 (52) 323 34 311

Skating on thin Ice This build up of Forex Reserves through the capital account by India, especially through the hot money into our stock markets by the FIIs/PN, is in direct contrast to the Chinese build-up of their forex reserves which is rooted in a judicious mix of capital as well as current account surplus. And that is not all. China has relied more on Foreign Direct investment rather than Forex flows into its stock markets. The reasons for the same is obvious - FDI flows are more stable as one cannot sell business and factories overnight and exit a country as in the case of FII/PN which can exit by a mere click of a mouse. This approach to Forex flows - first to rely on current account surplus and only on FDI as against FII/PN - became more or less institutionalised world over in the aftermath of the East Asian currency crisis. An analysis of the sources of our forex reserve accretion since 1991 reveals that the aggregate FDI flow into the country has been a mere $60 billions till March 2008. In contrast, FII/PN investments in the Indian capital market, aggregated to $67 billions by March 2008. What is interesting to note here is that the net FII/PN flow during 2007-2008 was a staggering $20 billion. In effect, one-third of the aggregate FII/PN flow of the past fifteen years was just in one year. No wonder India witnessed an unprecedented boom in her stock markets during 2007-08. Yet this is hot money which can exit India at the hint of a crisis, domestic or global. What accentuates India ‘s problem is that NRI deposits at $44 billions another source of hot
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money that can well exit the country at the slightest pretext accounted for a significant portion of our forex reserves. What is interesting to note that while the going was good at the global level, the economic managers appropriated the credit for such successes without explaining the underlying risks involved in this approach to build our Forex reserves. Anyone who pointed out the inherent risks in this model was ridiculed, lampooned and dismissed not only by the establishment but even by many in the media and the intellectual circles. In contrast to the popular belief that the boom in stock markets was a direct consequence of the boom in the real economy, the fact of the matter remained that it was unrestrained Forex inflow into the economy that created the boom in the first place - not otherwise. The cause was the effect; the effect was not linked to the cause. Surely, oblivious to all these we were all skating on thin ice. As the flow reverses, India faces a huge struggle What is interesting to note here is that as per press reports the aggregate FII flows as at 10th of January 2008 stood at $67 billions when the BSE index peaked in excess of 20,000 points. In the ensuing ten months the BSE index has since then crashed by approximately 50 per cent. In the process FII/PN has sold approximately $11 billions in these ten months. While the cause-effect seems to work on a linear scale on the way up, it seems to work exponentially on the way down. What makes the FII flow driven stock market rise as a yardstick of economic growth extremely risky in the Indian context is that according to experts less than three percent of the national household savings find their way into the stock market. No wonder, it is this FII/PN-flow that provided the necessary liquidity that drove our stock till 2007 and its subsequent reversal
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that is causing the steep fall of the stock markets, liquidity crunch and steep depreciation of the rupee. Yet oblivious to these fundamentals everyone including the finance minister and the prime minister continuously over the past four years pointed out to the spectacular rise of the stock markets as a conclusive proof of the brilliant handling of our economy! And when the stock markets fall, it is indeed amusing to see the UPA government defend its policies on an hourly basis. It may be recalled that such inflows set the stock markets on a dose of high octane. The boom in stock markets translated into a real estate boom. And when the excess liquidity flowed into the potato markets, government realised, it was not a case of potato boom but classical inflation where too much money chased too little goods! Therefore for the whole of 2008, the Indian government was left to fighting inflation by using a series of policy intervention. Naturally when the FII/PN flows reverse, the government is constrained to reverse all its policy intervention of the past two years. To begin, the RBI has lowered its CRR rate from 9 to 7.5 per cent last week. In the process all of us seem to have forgotten about inflation. But that brings us to the approach of successive Indian government, especially the UPA, which allowed unhindered Forex flows through the FII route. Like a mother administering steroids to her child and applauding the consequential unnatural growth, the UPA openly celebrated the rise of the stock markets which was caused by this gargantuan inflow. It is not the question of ownership of Indian corporates that is only bothering experts today. Rather, it is this rush of flows and sudden reversal that has the calculated impact of not only dynamiting the stock markets but also the currency markets and the money markets.
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Yet when the stock market was on a high, cheerleaders of the stock markets even went to the extent of opening the stock markets for the investments by approved provident funds. This needs to be seen in the context of the unprecedented amount redemption faced by our mutual Fund industry even since the markets went into a tizzy since last week. The lessons from this are all too compelling for the policy framers. India is not yet evolved psychologically to be dependent on stock markets. We are still a risk averse society with very little fallbacks available from the government in case things go bad. Naturally, that would delay the return of the Indian investor to the stock markets in the future. And that would mean the exit of the FII/PN would be painful to that extent. Yet, despite all these Finance Ministry mandarins have repeatedly assured the Indian investor and implicitly pleaded with him to stay invested. Little do they realise that having goofed up on the management of the stock markets their credibility is matched only by the credibility enjoyed by the American financial sector. (October 13, 2008, Rediff NEWS)

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But Dr Singh, some Swiss money is already in India!
M R Venkatesh

The public assertion of BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate L K
Advani to bring Indian money stashed in secret bank accounts abroad back into India has unsettled the Congress leadership in no small measure. Interestingly, the Left as well some regional parties too have included this idea in their poll manifesto for the forthcoming elections. Strangely, the Congress manifesto is silent on this issue. That explains the consternation in the Congress camp. Writing a detailed letter on the subject to L K Advani, Jairam Ramesh, the man in charge of the Congress’ campaign for the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls, has cautioned the former against using “obscure and un-authenticated internet sources” and questioned his claim of several crores of Indian money having been stashed abroad in secret accounts. Normally a suave person and not known to use harsh words, Jairam Ramesh having been caught on the wrong foot on this issue, even went to the extent of calling Advani a liar. Swiss money, after all, can make a cow eat meat. Within days of this missive, Prime Minister Dr. Singh too described Advani’s figure of up to USD 1.4 trillion of black money being stashed by Indians in Swiss banks and other tax havens as “bogus.” Further, Dr. Singh added “The tax havens are being asked to function in a manner which will ensure that people who want to keep their black money will find it difficult to do so.
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If the G-20 initiative succeeds, and that is only possible if there is an international agreement, then we will push for it.” In short, like the three monkeys of the Mahatma, the Congress will not see, speak or hear anything on this matter. But what is missed here is that it is fairly well-known that billions of dollars of the nation’s wealth have indeed been secreted aboard. Jairam Ramesh tacitly concedes this in the abovementioned letter by stating “That there are Indians with Swiss bank accounts is incontrovertible.” Yet when pressed for an action plan, the party inexplicably is diffused. It may be noted that ever since the German authorities have been able to prise open a secret bank account in Liechtenstein in 2008, there has been tremendous pressure by other governments to get back their national wealth from such tax-havens. This coupled with the global financial crisis has meant that the West, which saw these secret bank accounts as vehicles of growth and prosperity till date is now beginning to see them a villain of the piece. Now the West seeks their extermination with a vengeance. While the world has taken a U-turn on the subject and declared a war on secret bank accounts especially located in tax-havens, mysteriously, the Congress is silent. Nevertheless, while the Congress stone-walls for some strange reason, not many know that some portion of this money could have already made its way into India through the Participatory Notes (PNs) route. This requires some explanation. Readers may be aware that India has permitted foreign investment into our stock markets. This is usually done by the Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs). Further, those noninstitutional investors abroad who could ill-afford the cumbersome registration formalities with the Indian regulators had the choice of investing into India through the PN route. It is estimated that approximately 50-60% of the total investment made by FII aggregating to USD 67 billions till early 2008 was through the PN route.
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What makes the PN route absolutely sinister is that the identities of these investors are kept fully secret. Neither the market regulator SEBI nor the RBI knows about them. The RBI has repeatedly called upon the government to ban PNs as the nature of the beneficial ownership or the identity of the investor is unknown. Further, RBI apprehended that trading of these PNs could lead to multi-layering, which will make it difficult to identify the ultimate holder of PNs. What is worrying RBI is that some of the money coming into the stock market via PNs could be the “unaccounted wealth of some rich Indians” which was taken out first through the Hawala route and then brought into India through as PNs. Strangely, unlike the stringent Know Your Customer (KYC) norm applicable to domestic investors, the KYC norms for PNs are absolutely lax. This makes PNs a potent tool in the hand of Indians who have stashed money abroad and have routed it back into the Indian stock markets. Further, the RBI fears narco-terror money finding its way into the Indian stock market thorough the PN route. When the NSA Mr. Narayanan expressed apprehensions on how terrorists penetrated Indian stock markets and manipulated them a couple of years back, he was obviously referring to the PNs. Simultaneously, the market regulator SEBI has sought to seek information from several FIIs who had issued PNs to their clients. However, SEBI has repeatedly failed as FIIs have consistently cited client confidentiality agreements to stall investigations on the matter. And strangely courts in India too seem to view that SEBI does not have the necessary legal teeth to probe further on this matter. In 2008 the Securities Appellate Tribunal levied a penalty on SEBI for attempting to seek such information from Goldman Sachs, a FII registered with SEBI! Surely, a portion of “Swiss Money” – the shorthand for taxhavens and secret bank accounts for Indians - has found its way back into India. One way of dealing with the issue is to nationalise
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PNs (by expropriating them) now and here. Of course we can release the PNs belonging to other nationals and genuine foreign investors. Only then will the commitment to G-20 seem purposeful. That gives a choice to the Congress. They can endlessly debate the amount of money lying in secret bank accounts abroad. They can surely doubt the authenticity of the source of any information on this subject. They can repeatedly question what the NDA did when it was in power. They can wait for the G-20 to take action. Nevertheless, spelling out the plan of action to tackle PNs is the ultimate yet simple and powerful test for the Congress Party to demonstrate its commitment to tackle corruption and the convoluted issue of “Swiss Money.” The nation is waiting with bated breath to see the response of the party that presumes that it will be voted back to power. It needs to exercise the choice between obfuscation and demonstrate its commitment to fight corruption, sooner rather than later.

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Germany Punishes First of Liechtenstein Tax Dodgers Judges in Bochum handed a two-year suspended prison
sentence to a 66-year-old real estate tycoon Elmar Schulte in the first case brought to justice in Germany in a major Liechtenstein tax evasion scandal. He would probably receive a suspended term of two years’ jail for evading 7.5 million euros (USD 11.8 million) in tax between 2001 and 2006, the Judges observed. Elmar Schulte, from the western city of Bad Homburg, was found guilty of six counts of tax evasion after depositing several million euros in the Alpine principality of Liechtenstein and failing to declare the interest made. He had already paid 7.6 million euros in back taxes and fines to German tax authorities. Germany’s BND foreign intelligence service described how it bought data on trusts managed by the Liechtenstein Bank LTG on behalf of wealthy tax-shy Europeans. The BND reportedly paid about 4 million euros for one DVD with the data. Since then, German prosecutors have recovered 110 million euros in arrears from repentant taxpayers hoping to ward off trials, according to a prosecutor, Eduard Gueroff(Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung). Prosecutors in Bochum said they have opened inquiries against about 700 tax dodgers all over Germany. Under German tax law, they were supposed to report all dividends and interest earned abroad by trusts that they fully controlled.
[Deutsche Welle–DW-World.DE (German News Paper) 18.07.2008]

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First U.S. citizen arrested in UBS tax evasion case
A wealthy client of UBS AG became the first U.S. citizen to be arrested for tax evasion stemming from an investigation into secret offshore accounts at the Zurich, Switzerland, Bank. Michael Steven Rubinstein, a 55-year old yacht company accountant, was charged with one criminal count of filing a false and fraudulent tax return in U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Mr. Rubinstein deposited more than $2 million in Kruggerand gold coins into his UBS accounts and bought securities worth more than 4.5 million Swiss francs through the accounts from 2001 to 2008. UBS is under criminal investigation for helping U. S. citizens hide nearly $20 billion and evade taxes through secret offshore accounts that went unreported to the Internal Revenue Service. In February UBS admitted to conspiracy to defraud the IRS and paid $780 million to settle the charges. Federal prosecutors say Mr. Rubinstein is the first U.S. citizen to be criminally charged in the UBS case. Judge Barry Seltzer ordered Rubinstein held in jail until a hearing next date. Anyone looking for signs of how the U.S. government will carry out its crackdown on use of Swiss accounts to evade taxes now has a case to examine: Michael Steven Rubinstein of Boca Raton, Fla., is the first person to be prosecuted since the government’s recent agreement with UBS AG (UBS). In naming Rubinstein the Department of Justice and Internal Revenue Service alleges that from 2001 through 2008, Rubinstein communicated with UBS bankers regarding an account held in the British Virgin Islands, directing the purchase and sale of securities valued at 4.5 million Swiss francs, or about USD 4 million at current exchange rates. According to the government’s filing, Rubinstein didn’t disclose the existence of the UBS account, as required by law, on his 2007 income tax return, nor did he report income from the account on the return. UBS also agreed to make reforms and pay USD 780 million in fines and penalties.
(Source : http://newsfeedresearcher.com/data/articles_b15/ account-rubinstein-bank.html#references – 5.4.2009)

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Interim Recommendations of the Task Force On the steps to be taken by the Indian government to bring the funds illegally stashed away in secret tax havens, particularly Switzerland

his press conference, Shri Advani announced the determination of a future BJP-led government at the Centre, if elected, to bring India’s sovereign wealth back from foreign shores. He also announced the formation of a Task Force to recommend to the BJP leadership specific steps that a future government may take to translate this promise into reality. Members of the Task Force 1. 2. 3. 4. S. Gurumurthy – Chartered Accountant and investigative writer, Chennai Ajit Doval - Security expert, New Delhi Dr. R. Vaidyanathan – Professor of Finance, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore Mahesh Jethmalani - Senior Lawyer, Mumbai

At

The Task Force has submitted its recommendations in this interim report. This report in full, along with the texts of two statements issued by Shri Advani on this matter, are available at ww.bjp.org and www.lkadvani.in.
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Summary of Recommendations
Global Strategy
Step I Creating a powerful public opinion in India is a pre-requisite for global response to India’s requirements in regard to unveiling banking secrecy. The world respects powerful domestic opinion on global issues. India must first realize that this is the ideal time to act and join the global crusade against secret banks and tax havens. In the absence of a broad national consensus on the issue, only a determined leader with a committed team can create the strong national will needed for undertaking this serious agenda overcoming all attempts to impede the effort. This is what French and German leaders are demonstrating to the world. What is critical is sincere and skillful communication to the people at large without whose support the vested interests will not allow this undertaking to succeed. We recommend that the BJP must create a powerful public opinion which would force those who do not support this measure to come around to support like the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was forced to do after the February G-20 preparatory meeting in which he did not extend support to Germany and France. Those who do not support the move should be seen as supporters of black economy as it happened in the case of Mr Gordon Brown. Step II We recommend that India should stop being a silent spectator to the G20 efforts against secret banking and tax havens like it is now and must become an actor, an active player and forthwith change the perception that it is not against secret banking and tax havens.
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Step III We recommend that India must immediately show its seriousness and effectively urge the German government to provide the details of the Indian names from the LGT bank secret records. The BJP, if voted to power, must send a special emissary to Germany, which is willing to give the details of Indian names in the LGT bank secret records. Step IV We recommend that India must strive for global, multilateral effort, which is the only solution. India is today seen as not a serious player to undo the secret regime. To undo that impression steps I, II and III are critical for India to take up. Step V We recommend India must effectively participate in the multilateral efforts that are on to pries open the secrecy in global tax and financial system. India has special needs beyond what the West is seeking to break banking secrecy. The west knows the details of whose account to ask for from Swiss and other tax havens. India needs a easier model of breaking the secret wall of the mystic banks. India should work with the West to get the OECD rules on internationally agreed tax standard which has been endorsed by the UN accepted by the Swiss and get those rules suitably amended to suit the requirements of India. That will bring an end to the banking secrecy in Switzerland and elsewhere. Unless the Swiss and other tax havens agree to change the laws no way any government in India or elsewhere can attempt to bring back their wealth stashed away. That global coercive action is working is seen from that fact that the G20 threat to blacklist tax havens and secret banking is already beginning to yield results, with Switzerland crumbling and other tax havens agreeing to accept the OECD standards of disclosure.
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India keeping away from global efforts is costing the national interests as India needs special terms to break the secrecy which it cannot get unless it effectively participates in the global effort. Step VI We recommend that India appoint a special ambassador with adequate knowledge of the tax havens and secret bank issues to work with the G20 specifically for framing India-friendly rules to unveil the secret banking and havens.

National Strategy
1. Collection of information from emigration: 2. Monitoring high frequency tax havens 3. Becoming full-fledged member of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) 4. Use of financial intelligence sharing for security purposes 5. Legislative support 6. High Level Task Force 7. The history of illicit wealth holders should be brought out.

BJP President Mr. Advani releasing the Interim Report of the Task Force
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FAQs on Tax Havens and Secret Wealth
Dr. R Vaidyanathan

1) Which are the various tax havens, where the ill-gotten wealth of Indian businessmen and politicians is stored? There are presumably more than 70 Tax havens in the world. Indian wealth could be more in Switzerland and various British /US islands. At least forty countries market themselves aggressively as tax havens [Source: Internal revenue Service USA on Abusive a Off-shore Tax Avoidance schemes –Talking Points Jan 2008] The well known Tax Havens are Switzerland/ Liechtenstein/ Luxemburg/ Channel islands etc. 2) How much Indian money do you think would be locked away in Swiss banks? What is the basis for the estimate you make? Financial flows in the context of Global Financial Integrity’s Report includes the proceeds from both illicit activities such as corruption (bribery and embezzlement of national wealth), criminal activity, and the proceeds of licit business that become illicit when transported across borders in contravention of applicable laws and regulatory frameworks (most commonly in order to evade payment of taxes).
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a) In 2006, the most recent year of the Global Financial Integrity-[GFI] study, developing countries lost an estimated $858.6 billion to $1.06 trillion in illicit financial outflows. b) Even at the lower end of the range of estimates, the volume of illicit financial flows coming out of developing countries increased at a compound rate of 18.2 percent over the 5 year period analyzed for the study. c) On average, for the five-year period of this study, Asia accounts for approximately 50 percent of overall illicit financial flows from all developing countries. d) This report shows that the average amount stashed away from India annually during 2002-06 is $27.3 billion. It means that during the 5 year period the amount stashed away is 27.3x5=136.5 billion. It is not that all these amounts had gone to Swiss. It has gone to different tax and secret shelters. The share of Swiss banks in dirty money being a third of the global aggregate, some $ 45 billion out of the 136.5 billion stashed away from India would have been hoarded in these years in Swiss banks. This appears in page 30 of the report mentioned above. e) The important point is that this is only for 5 years. More amounts were stashed away during the Nehruvian socialist regime. So the loot for 55 years would be several times the about money. In fact in those days the Indian rupee commanded a better value per Dollar. So fewer rupee could get more dollars. So the estimation that the Indian money stashed away may be of the order of $1.4 trillion. f) The International Narcotics Control Strategy Report – Money Laundering and Financial Crimes –March 2009— by US department of state suggests that 30-40 percent of the inflows may be by Hawala market –not accounted. During 2007-2008 according that report formal inflows were USD 42.6 billion and so 40 percent of this namely

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USD 1.8 Billion could be reflected as illegal “flows” not captured by the law. This sum could be paid for in rupees here but stored in tax havens abroad. Sources : Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries: 2002—2006 Global Financial Integrity – [GFI] Authors DEV Kar and Devon-Cartwright Smith (A Project of Ford Foundation) (http://www.gfip.org/storage/gfip/executive%20%20final%20version%201-5-09.pdf) 3) How did the money get there in the first place? (if you could elaborate a little on this, that would be great)? There are several methods /reasons. Under invoicing/over invoicing of exports and imports and getting the balance stored abroad.Kick backs from major defense/civilian contracts. Not bringing the earnings abroad. In the olden days smuggling of Gold and illegal money. Transactions done abroad and not reported here. Hawala funds. Funds earned by artists/ Entertainment industry /sports people and stashed abroad. When you want to indulge in Adharma hundred ways are open! 4) What is this Lichtenstein affairs? Germany’s intelligence agency seems to have paid an unnamed informer more than USD 6 million for confidential and secret data about clients of LGT group a bank owned by the Liechtenstein [notice that the Prince’s surname is that of the country!] Prince’s family. The revelations have already led to the resignation of the head of Deutsche Post—the former German mail service—which is currently the world’s largest logistics company in the world. The Lichtenstein leaders are furious and have focused all their ire at the theft of the data rather than on the facts of the case. The German Government
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has announced that it would share information on accounts held in the tax haven with any Government that wanted it. They had a list of 1400 clients of whom 600 are only Germans. The spokesman for the German Finance ministry Thorstein Albig has indicated that they would respond to such requests without charging any fees for the information. Finland, Sweden, and Norway have expressed interest in the data obtained by the Berlin intelligent agency. But our Government has been lukewarm in this issue. It should have despatched immediately senior officials/ minsters to get the names. 5) What is the impact of this Lichtenstein revelations in Germany? Another interesting thing which is taking place is the results of the crackdown in Germany An April 8th -2009-report by Reuters says that “A crackdown on tax havens that prompted Switzerland to loosen its banking secrecy is encouraging more and more Germans to come clean about foreign accounts they use to evade taxes. Berlin has waged a very public campaign to stamp out tax evasion since Klaus Zumwinkel, then chief executive of Deutsche Post and one of Germany’s top businessmen, was arrested in a major tax probe last February. “Zumwinkel kicked off a bit of an avalanche,” said Andreas Boehm, a lawyer based in central Berlin. “Afterwards, the number of people coming clean with us ... rose by about 400 to 500 percent. And that level has been maintained.” This is a positive outcome of the LGT affair where India has been reluctant to grab the names of Indians in the list with the Germans.
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6) Do the Swiss Agree to the fact of Money from Indians kept in their banks? Addressing a press conference to commemorate the 60 years of Indo-Swiss Friendship Treaty, [The Swiss Ambassador to India] said “Switzerland was accused of giving shelter to black money and there has been a lot of inflow of such wealth from India and other countries of the world,” Dreyer said. The Ambassador said “I would not say it would be stopped 100 per cent (under a new law). But through this measure, it would be controlled up to a certain limit.” [15-03- 2008 NDTV Profit] 7) Do you feel international terrorist organisations use the tax haven route, to send across money all over the world, to finance their nefarious activities? Even our NSA—M.K Narayanan has spoken about it in Berlin. 8) You recently wrote, “Under pressure from federal authorities, Swiss bank UBS is closing the hidden offshore accounts of its well-heeled American clients, potentially allowing their secrets to spill into the open.” Do you feel the government of India should also demand all the Indian black money in Swiss banks, back? Of course. India should and must act. We are not a banana republic. 9) How can the government go about doing the same? What are the different ways in which it can try and get this money back? Put it on the Global Agenda. Put it in G 20 Put it in IMF Put is in EGMONT GROUP. Also take a lead among all developing countries. Support US /German/French Efforts. 10) Why are the Swiss in the eye of the Storm? For instance a report dated 10th April 2009 by AFP mentions that “The head of the Organization for Economic Cooperation
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and Development, Angel Gurria, referred in a letter to Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz to the “inaccuracy” of charges of unfair treatment made by Swiss officials. “We only shared the criteria that have been approved by our committees and the jurisdictions that were adopting or not the OECD standard,” he said.”As you know very well, Switzerland does not yet have a single agreement on the exchange of tax information that conforms to the OECD standard.” 11) Do you feel Swiss authorities and other tax havens will cooperate with us on this issue, if we do take the initiative? It is not due to our pressure but that of US which will make them co-operate. When a family is in deep financial crisis then it tries to look at the small amount saved under the sugar jar by the grandma. Same way developed economies are desperate for every dollar. Even if we do not act due to their efforts the list of crooks may be out. Then we will be in a dangerous social situation since Who’s Who of India will be there. Instead we should get it and get the funds and decide on the steps to sterilise it and punishment etc. Otherwise world will laugh at us. We will be worst than a Nigeria [Sani Abacha] or Phillipines [Markose]. 12) After the crackdown by Germans etc— How does the Swiss react? Swiss private bankers are likely to reduce their exposure to wealthy Indian clients as they cut down their discreet banking services in countries like Germany, France and the United States, analysts say. As the worldwide crackdown on tax evasion gathered momentum following the recent G20 meeting in London, several Swiss banks, including UBS, which is the world’s largest manager of private wealth assets, have issued travel directives to their “client-facing” staff not to visit foreign countries for carrying out what are
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called offshore wealth-management banking services. UBS, for instance, has asked its wealth management staff not to travel abroad to meet clients. “This will also apply to India,” said Serge Steiner, a UBS executive. “However, UBS India will continue to service wealth management for Indian clients,” he added. In effect, it would be a complete onshore (domestic) activity unlike the UBS wealth management staff descending from Singapore to service rich Indian clients. At present, Swiss banks manage around $2 trillion offshore assets of clients from various countries.UBS, which is now mired in a major legal dispute with the US tax authorities, has passed information of over 300 accounts of wealthy American clients to the US Internal Revenue Service. But the IRS is not satisfied with UBS and it wants the Swiss bank to provide information on some 52,000 American clients. Besides, two UBS bankers were arrested in the US on the plea that they were involved in tax fraud, analysts said. Consequently, UBS and other Swiss private banks are preparing ground to reduce their exposure to offshore banking services in a move to avoid further difficulties for the bank. Other Swiss private bankers too have been discreetly cautioned not to undertake visits in the wake of growing pressure from the G-20 leaders, especially Germany and France, who seem determined to pry open the secret tax havens. But a representative of the Swiss bankers association said there was no general directive to private bankers in Switzerland, suggesting that it is up to each individual bank to decide their foreign travel. [Source –Business standard 09-04-09] 13) Do you feel the government will do this, given that a lot of black money of politicians is stored in the Swiss banks? Public pressure will make them do it. Plus the evolving global situation against Tax Havens. The money belongs to the poor farmers and unorganised workers of India.
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14) Also Indian businessmen have a lot of their ill-gotten gains in these banks. Do you see pressure being applied by them on the government on not to get this money back? The world situation is such that Indian Business man will want to bring it back now given the attractive returns in India. The entire PN route was conceived for that. 15) What about outflows from India through these tax havens? On the other side we find more disturbing issues pertaining to out flow of funds from India. We find that from the statistics available in the Finance ministry web site on the countrywise approvals of Indian Direct investments in JV’s and wholly owned subsidiaries during 1996 to 2007 that more than one third of outflows of a total of around 31000 million USD is to many of the well known tax havens like Channel island[5400Million USD] ,Mauritius[2600Million USD] Virgin Islands [1008 million USD] ;Cyprus [ 1361 million USD] Cayman islands [104 Million USD] .Indian business howsoever capable cannot think of investing 5400 million USD or around Rs 21000 Crore in Channel Island. These data are not available for FII’s nor in terms of who are the corresponding investors. 16) You wrote in your column that the German foreign intelligence agency BND got names of 1400 clients of the Liechtenstein based LTG bank who were supposed to be suspected tax evaders. Of the 1400, 600 were supposed to be Germans. Do you think of the remaining there will be Indians as well? Has the Indian government approached the German government for the list? Indian names will be there. Our Tax evaders and crooks are like Maha Vishnu present in all continents and all tax havens in the sea, on the earth, in the air. But our Government has been lukewarm in this issue. It should have despatched immediately senior officials plus the FM to get the names.

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17) What about Domestic black money? Is it not important to tackle? Domestic black or unaccounted money is definitely important. At least Domestic black money is used in our economy and to that extent it is productive. But the money kept in Swiss Banks is neither useful to India nor it benefits Indians.

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There is a real fight ahead: a fight in the national interest
Arun Shourie

Stupefied by the strong endorsement all across the country of
the demand that the money looted from India must be brought back, the Congress has tied itself in knots. Its spokesmen – led, as will be clear from the arguments they have advanced, by four lawyers – have given five reactions: * * * * * ..........Why is Mr. Advani taking up this matter now, on the eve of elections? ..........The GE-20 meeting was not the proper forum for taking up the issue. ..........There is doubt about the figures. ..........Why did the BJP government to replace FERA by FEMA, and thereby make the offences compoundable? ..........Is Mr. Advani not unwittingly alerting those with illegal money abroad to spirit it away from Switzerland to other tax havens? ..........What was the NDA doing when it was in office? In any case there is doubt about the figures.

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The reactions betray panic as even the littlest reflection would have shown the “arguments” to be indefensible. Let us consider them one by one.
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Why is Mr. Advani taking up this matter now, on the eve of elections? The fact, of course, is that Mr. Advani took up the matter with the Prime Minister in April last year. He wrote to Dr. Manmohan Singh soon after it became known that the Government of Germany had succeeded in obtaining names of persons who had stashed money in the LGT Bank in Lichtenstein. The reply that P. Chidambram, the then Finance Minister, sent him showed that the Government intended to do little except keep going through the pretence of taking some steps. Soon thereafter, we were alarmed to learn that a senior official of the Finance Ministry had written to the then Indian Ambassador in Germany not to press the Germans for release of the names of Indians in the list that they had obtained from Lichtenstein — lest the Germans take offence and conclude that they were being pressurized and their bona fides were being questioned! [This information was later confirmed by report filed by Amitabh Ranjan in The Indian Express of 31 March 2009.] Subsequently, we took up the matter in Parliament also. And yet the evasion, “Why now?” The GE-20 meeting was not the proper forum for taking up the issue. This customarily self-serving rationalization was put out by one of the Congress party’s lawyers and spokesmen. At this very time the party was trying to insinuate that, actually speaking, the Prime Minister had taken up the matter at the G-20 Summit. As its spokesmen could not point to any statement he made either at the Summit itself or even at the press meet the PM had held after the Summit, they drew solace from a passing reference to the matter in the speech he had made at the dinner hosted by Gordon Brown. In any case, if the G-20 Summit was not the right forum for taking up this matter, how is it that in the communiqué that the G-20 leaders issued on 2 April 2009, in paragraph 15, entitled, “Strengthening the Financial System,” they pledged themselves
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“to take action against non-cooperative jurisdictions, including tax havens. We stand ready to deploy sanctions to protect our public finances and financial systems. The era of banking secrecy is over. We note that the OECD has today published a list of countries assessed by the Global Forum against the international standard for exchange of tax information”? Were they also, in the view of the Congress party, acting inappropriately when they made such a strong commitment in their communiqué at the Summit? And recall that no sooner had they issued the threat of imposing sanctions that countries which had been black-listed by the OECD that very day began declaring that they would indeed sign up on the agreement to exchange tax information, and that includes evasion. In any case, there is doubt about the figures. As is its custom, the Congress is trying to cover up the basic question of the money which has been looted from India and is lying in tax havens, by raising questions about the precision of figures and estimates. This is exactly the kind of legalisms with which persons like Mr P. Chidambaram and other legitimizers were fielded to cover up the loot from Bofors. In its paper, “Overview of the OECD’s Work on International Tax Evasion,” the OECD itself lists studies that state that there are $1.7 trillion to $11.5 trillion which are today parked in tax havens. This paper of the OECD has been widely reported in the Indian press. The basic point is: even if the amounts are just a few scores of billion dollars and not one and a half trillion dollars, why should they not be brought back to India? And the fact is that other countries, much smaller countries with none of the pretensions of being a “super power, have succeeded in getting their money back. Even as of October last year, when the OECD released its paper, little Ireland had succeeded in recovering almost a billion Euros through an investigation into offshore banks.
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Given that even small countries like Ireland have got money back, is it not a shame, is it not an outrage that, as of yesterday, 18 April, 2009, The Times of India, should be quoting the Swiss Ambassador to India as stating on record that till now, the Swiss Government has received no request – not even a request – from the Indian Government? The real question is different: can the money looted from India be brought back to the country when the attitude of the government continues to be as determinedly inactive as that of the present Government? Can the Government which allowed Ottavio Quattrochi to take his money out of banks – where it was lying frozen on court orders – be trusted to bring back the loot that is lying in Swiss banks and other tax havens? Can the Government which prostituted the CBI so that he may get away from Argentina be trusted to bring the loot back? Why did the BJP government to replace FERA by FEMA, and thereby make the offences compoundable? Again, the Congress is relying on the short memory of its audience. The fact of the matter is that no one had been pressing more for the replacement of the harsh provisions of FERA than the Congress itself. The changes were being contemplated since 1996. The demand for doing away with the harsh provisions came to a crescendo during the Government of Mr. VP Singh when FERA came to be used for interrogating captains of industry – like Mr. S.L. Kirloskar – under harsh circumstances. As news reports of that period themselves indicate, FEMA which was approved by the Government in July 1998, was on the lines of a draft which had been prepared under the leadership of the preceding finance minister, Mr P. Chidambaram. Even today, you can go to the website of Rediff-on-the- net, go to their dispatch of 25 July, 1998, on “FEMA, Money Bills: Cabinet nods, Parliament’s turn next,”
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and you will read, “The Bills were broadly on the lines of a draft prepared under the leadership of then Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambram.” In any event, there is no mystery about the reasons on account of which the law was changed. They are well set out in the following passage: “Until recently, we had a law known as the Foreign Exchange (Regulation) Act. Its object was to conserve and augment the forex reserves of the country. The way to hell, it is said, is paved with good intentions. Like many wellintentioned laws, FERA paved the way to disaster. FERA created a flourishing black market in foreign exchange. It brought into the economic lexicon the word ‘Hawala’. Illegal forex transactions became the fuel for the growth of crime syndicates with trans-border connections. “FERA also became a tool of oppression. Successive governments persisted with FERA and added COFFEPOSA and SAFEMA. International markets do not respect draconian laws that run counter to common sense. India’s reserves, far from being augmented, dwindled at an alarming rate… Mercifully, FERA was buried finally on May 31, 2000.” When and where was this written? In an article that appeared The Indian Express on 25 August 2002. Who wrote the article? None other than P. Chidambaram! Is Mr Advani not unwittingly alerting those with illegal money abroad to spirit it away from Switzerland to other tax havens? Another clever little statement by yet another clever lawyer of the Congress party! Would the looters who have stashed away money in tax havens from India still need to be alerted after Germany got the names from Lichtenstein as long ago as last year? Would they still need to be alerted after Germany offered to furnish the names to governments that asked for the names? Would they still need to be alerted after the United States got the names from the leading bank of Switzerland, UBS in February this year, and got it to submit to paying a fine of $ 800 million to boot? Would they still need to be alerted after the G-20 leaders, including Dr. Man Mohan Singh as the Congress would like to
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remind us, declared their determination to get the tax havens to disgorge the names? But such is the confusion in the Congress party and such the brilliance of its lawyers that all it can do is to seek to deflect the nation-wide demand for getting the loot back from tax havens by such witticisms! What was the NDA doing when it was in office? In any case there is doubt about the figures. Leaders of the Congress party would be better advised to ask, “During that very period, what was the Congress party doing, what were its lawyers and leaders doing, to thwart the efforts of the NDA Government to uncover the names of persons who had looted the country even on defence deals like Bofors?” But even if the NDA had done nothing – whether on terrorism or money abroad – is that any reason for not hurrying to avail of the unique opportunity that has arisen now? Even while replacing FERA by FEMA, the NDA Government made sure that it would have an additional two years to file prosecutions under FERA. And it filed as many as 2000 cases against those who were under investigation before FERA lapsed. The reason for doing so, a reason that is well known to lawyers in the Congress party, was that, when a prosecution is filed it is adjudicated according to the law which prevailed at the time at which the case was filed. These are the very cases which the Congress later on did not pursue. The fact of the matter is that it is now that the unique opportunity has arisen to get the loot back: Germany has succeeded in getting the names; the US has succeeded in getting the names; the G-20 leaders have pledged themselves to ensure the end of bank secrecy; countries that had hitherto refused to share the requisite information are pledging to do so – within a week of their names being published by OECD in the list of countries that were dragging their feet on the question, Costa Rica, Malaysia, Philippines and Uruguay pledged to enter into the relevant agreements.
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Conclusion There is a real fight ahead: a fight in the national interest, a fight that will have to be waged doggedly to get the names from the tax havens and to get the amounts back to India – as tax havens will not easily part with their route to lucre. And not all countries will be eager to wage the fight – so many rulers in Africa, in Latin America, to say nothing of the princelings of China – will be loath to see the fight succeed. So, determination and leadership will be required of India, and persistence, and forging alliances with civil society in Europe and elsewhere. Nor are bilateral agreements any substitute to multilateral pressure. With close to seventy tax havens, decades will pass before agreements are concluded with each haven, even as money is spirited from the haven that has signed up to the one that is holding out. As has been correctly emphasized, a consensus is already emerging across the country. Leaders outside the political realm, parties such as the CPI(M), SP, BSP, JD(U), AIADMK have all demanded that the Government act energetically to get the names from the tax havens and to get back the amounts. Instead of quibbling, the Congress would be well-advised to endorse the consensus, and act on it. Not joining secular forces on even so secular an issue?! Even now, Mr. Advani has urged, all parties, including the Congress, to get together and strive towards this objective. That is an objective that the NDA will most determinedly pursue once it is voted to office.

You are part of the taskforce created to bring black money back from secret bank accounts abroad. The BJP has made it an election issue. Were you instrumental in getting Mr Advani to take up the issue? This is a subject I have been working on since 1986. In fact, I was even arrested because I was trying to dig into the secret accounts of the Gandhi family. I have always been talking to many politicians on this subject; I had also spoken to the BJP. At that time, it was more ideal to work on it than anything practical. It is not that India on its own can prevent global black money being generated, because there are countries which help the generation of black money by their laws, and Switzerland is the most important of them. These countries provide secrecy, and anybody can go and deposit money incognito. Their laws prohibit the disclosure of names. Only rarely, where you can link the money to corruption or drugs, is it possible to trace the flight of capital. For that, they have treaties with different countries, including with India. But you need to know the name of the criminal and his account number to ask for the details. It has always been a question on the minds of the Indian people and also those keen on establishing the amount of money that
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has gone there, but there was no proper estimate. But this has always been a topic of debate in the minds of those who are interested in the country. Why did the BJP decide to take it up as an issue now? It is essentially because of the turn in the Western nations’ approach to secret banking due to the economic crisis in the West. The West began feeling the pinch of secret banking. They felt that the financial system is getting destabilised because of the generation of black money. Black money in the West is not as much flight of capital as it is evasion of taxes. In India, it is both black money and flight of capital. Were the recent developments in Germany, with its authorities asking for the secret names, the turning point? The Germans took the step of bribing a bank official of the LGT Bank in Liechtenstein by paying $6 million. They got a secret CD containing 1,500 names of people who have stashed away money, and nearly 500, 600 of these were Germans. They acted against them, which included the head of the German postal system. Then they told the entire world that anyone could ask for the names and if the names of those countries’ nationals were there, they would part with it free of cost. All the countries made a request, but not India. So, Advaniji wrote a letter in April last year, but an evasive reply was given. Three other things also happened. One, after Germany acted very powerfully, there was a big diplomatic row between Liechtenstein and Germany. Liechtenstein is a place from where secret trusts are created and monies are deposited into Switzerland. It is a principality. Then, Germany took up the issue in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s 17-nation platform (Switzerland is one of them) and asked for blacklisting and
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sanctions against Switzerland. France also joined Germany. This happened some time in October last year. Switzerland did not know what to do then and they began lobbying. France and Germany then took it to the G-20 preparatory meeting. They said at the G-20 meeting on April 2 that they were asking for blacklisting of and sanctions against Switzerland and all those countries that were not cooperating. So that was why Mr Advani wanted Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to raise the issue at the G20 meet? At that time Advaniji felt as the PM was attending the April 2 meeting, he should take up this issue. But our people remained silent at the G-20 preparatory meet. See what India did. We didn’t forcefully ask the Germans to give us the particulars. When Germany and France took up the matter in the OECD, we didn’t welcome it. When they took up the matter in G-20 we did not support them or join them. So, from all this arose a big question, whether the government was at all interested in working against illicit Indian monies abroad. That is why Advaniji took up the matter. As the government did not take it up, the BJP had to take it up as an electoral issue. The Congress said Mr Advani was lying... It is like this: A theft has taken place, and you are arguing about how much has been stolen. Nobody denies the theft! Nobody denies the loot! How much black money from India must be there in the secret Swiss accounts? A global study was conducted by an expert, Raymond W Baker, which we have quoted in the report. He published a book in 2005, Capitalism’s Achilles Heel: Dirty Money And How To Renew The Free Market System. After 2001, secret money became an issue of security. So America became worried about terror funding which takes place only through secret banking channels.
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His book estimated the black money to be $11.5 trillion which is increasing at the rate of $1 trillion every year, out of which $500 billion is stolen from developing countries. Is the report one of the reasons why the BJP decided to raise the issue? That alone would not have helped. The change in the economic situation made the Western countries try to break banking secrecy. That was the most important point. US President Obama has proposed a law to break the secrecy. Like I said earlier, you have to join forces at the global level as the battle needs to be fought at the global level. That is the reason why the BJP decided to take it up. The GFI study only indicated the magnitude of the problem. It says between 2002 and 2006, the amount of money stashed away from India would be on an average $27 billion a year and totally about $137.5 billion which is equal to Rs 688,000 crores in just five years. So, the fact of the loot can never be disputed. What the Congress is trying to do is to dispute the maths of the issue. The fact is, whatever be the amount, it is very big. Why do you think the Congress is not taking up the issue? Obviously, a large part of it must be Congressmen’s money, they have ruled the country for 50 years. Why did Sonia Gandhi not speak on this subject? She is said to be a close friend of Ottavio Quattrocchi and it has been established that he had received bribe money from Bofors through secret banking systems and tax havens. The Central Bureau of Investigation successfully traced the money and kept it frozen. He was allowed to leave India first and then take the money back. I believe the lead family of the Congress party is a suspect in the matter of foreign money and that is why the family doesn’t want the banks’ secrecy to be unveiled.
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Their friends are the only people who have been caught so far. No other Indian has been caught except the people associated with the Gandhi family in the Bofors scandal. What are the taskforce’s plans? First, he (Advani) wanted us to find out what the global position was. That is the first report we gave. We have said it is doable if we work on an appropriate strategy. We have to also generate a national consensus and arouse a high level of consciousness among the people about the issue. Is that the reason why a survey was conducted in Gujarat on black money in secret bank accounts? Yes, the BJP wants to make people to proactively think and participate in the campaign. You are talking about huge sums of money. If at all we manage to bring it back to India, what do you say India should do with it? Even if 25 per cent of what they are talking about comes back, India’s rating will go up because it’s our own money and not borrowed money. It can transform the economic personality of the nation. The BJP manifesto says if the money comes back, it will be used for fundamental purposes like rural roads, schools, poverty alleviation and things like that. It will be used for social causes and not building airports.

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About the Authors…..

Dr R Vaidyanathan r R Vaidyanathan is a Professor of Finance at IIM in Bengaluru. He obtained his Fellowship in Management from IIMKolkata where he taught for few years. He has published a number of articles in India and abroad on Corporate Finance and Capital Markets. He has also published extensively about the role of unincorporated sector in the Indian economy. Vaidyanathan is a National Fellow of ICSSR, member of the Advisory Committee on Secondary Markets & Risk Management of the Security Exchange Board of India, Member of the Standing Advisory Committee on Data Base of the Indian economy of the RBI and is the President of the Asia Pacific Risk and Insurance Association. He was a member of a committee constituted by IRDA to study the pension schemes for the unorganized sector. He was a member of the Multi-disciplinary High power Group to reform Employees Provident Fund Organization [EPFO]. He has been researching on the theme “Tax Havens and Illegal Funds of India” quite a long time and he is a member of the Task Force constituted by the BJP on Secret Wealth Stashed Abroad.
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M R Venkatesh Energetic young Chartered Accountant Sri M R Venkatesh passed CA in 1992 with an all India Ranking and has been in active practice since 1993. He is also a commentator on International Trade/ Economic Affairs and a regular contributor to the prestigious publications in India. He was instrumental in bringing out a White Paper on the Black deeds of the Multi National Accounting firms. M R Venkatesh has also authored a detailed report on the farm sector in India in the context of ongoing Doha Round of negotiations and the aegis of WTO. In 2007, his remarkable book ‘Global Imbalances and the impending Dollar crisis’ was released in Chennai and his book on antidumping duty had the honour of being released by Sri. Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He is a visiting faculty in various professional institutions, Chambers of Commerce and Universities. Arun Shourie India’s most prolific and renowned journalist-cum-politician, Sri Arun Shourie is a Doctorate in Economics from Syracuse University of New York. His tenure as the editor of Indian Express heralded a new era in Indian journalism. During the Internal Emergency imposed in 1975 Shourie started fighting against the attrition of civil liberties and uncovering corruption in the highest echelons of the government. He served as Union Minister for various departments during the BJP regime. He has written 15 books which include “Worshiping False Gods”, “Eminent Historians Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud” among others. He has received several national and international awards such as Padma Bhushan, Magsaysay Award, Dadabhai Naoroji Award etc.

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S Gurumurthy Sri S Gurumurthy is one of India’s wellknown professional Chartered Accountants and a highly respected and sought after corporate advisor. The investigative journalist in Gurumurthy was at display when he exposed the corporate misdeeds and corruption at high places in mid and late 1980s. He has travelled across the country and along with his team of professionals and academics in the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch studied over 25 communitydriven industrial clusters in the last 15 years. He regularly contributes columns in leading newspapers like the Hindu Business Line, the New Indian Express and others on issues of critical importance to the society and the country. He is the All-India Co-Convenor of Swadeshi Jargan Manch (SJM) a powerful opinion-making body which creates acute debate on economic issues in India. A keen student of law, finance and accounts, politics and economics, philosophy and religion, Gurumurthy is a rare confluence of the tradition and the modern. Gurumurthy is thus an unbelievably multidimensional personality who has a message for the elite and the ordinary, for the traditional and the modern, for the world as much for his own motherland, India.

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Swadeshi Jagaran Manch [SJM]

The Swadeshi Jagaran Manch [SJM] is a National Movement
started in 1991 in the wake of the Indian economy opening up under the foreign exchange crisis during the same time. This happened without any kind of debate, discussion or preparation, a wholesale defection from the state controlled model to market driven system. At the ideological level, communism is now defunct and while capitalism is terminally ill, it is the most opportune time for projecting a more humane, non- exploitative, holistic and spiritually elevating alternative i.e. a third way. The market economics devised by the economic behavioural model of the West, namely atomized western socio-economic evolution, will be difficult to be absorbed in the highly family and community oriented socio-economic system functioning in India. SJM’s alternative to the present globalisation is to recognise the uniqueness and sacredness of the cultures, living models, and other distinguishing values which constitute the diversity of the world. Our idea of globalisation is to seek unity in diversity and not unity through uniformity. We have a long way to go to convince our own people and the world at large. But the current virtual money driven, savings-dry, consumption oriented life style cannot be sustained in the long run as has been evidenced by the decline of the US economy. The world will recognize or will be forced to recognize the inevitability of an alternative that is essentially the functional model of India . The ultimate answers to many so-called developmental problems should be sought in the cultural and moral realms. Swadeshi is the name given collectively to arrangements which help in the advancement of civilization on healthy lines and at a natural pace.
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